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Tue 21 Aug, 2007 06:44 pm
I have done some landscaping and I think I'll be doing some more. I might want to make a little business of it for the summers. I wanted to set up a little a2k portfolio to help remind me of what I've done.
Today, I made a retaining wall around an oak in my parents' yard. The city redid the road and dumped a lot of dirt on top of it's roots and my mother wanted to pull some of that bulk off to keep the oak alive. It shades her shade-garden a little. I'll also be spreading loam around in between this spot and the shade garden to even the slope. I'll be transplanting pitch pines to provide more shade and some privacy from the street. And will be replanting beach grass that had volunteered in that area. I moved it to even the slope.
retaining wall:
Is that the grade it's used to?
Oaks in California are very touchy about grade level, to the edge of canopy and somewhat beyond. Different varieties, different regions. I've run into this before, on one of Chai's threads, where were were talking different region and oaks.
Don't mean to be obnoxious - just have been the designer for some large projects where saving oaks was not only a concern but mandated. Your oak is in a tiny urban concreted plot as it is.
I presume the pressure is not so great back there, with diff oaks. I'd double check with the arboretum to be sure though.
That's the level. We'll see how it does. Any more cutting into the town's berm will 'compromise the street'. Pffft. The town did come deliver the rocks for free.
Osso, this oak is on cape cod, not in the city.
Being Cambridge, the town should know what it's doing, given the swifties at Harvard design. My wondering is if the wall should be at the edge of the planting area, and curb height or higher, to keep stuff outta there and the soil at grade. Perhaps even curb coring for drainage but that would be for CA live oaks, and others that historically covered much of CA. No more than a few inches over the roots, and a short plant list. Curb core could be wrong for there, so don't listen to me.
I may be all wet, but ck with A. Arboretum, what the hell, you may make some friends. Hah, van Valkenburgh's office should know.
Helloooo, helloooo, is this thing on? Osso - it's not a Cambridge oak.
Well, it seems surrounded by concrete... maybe I should look harder.
on your idea of doing landscape design, I couldn't be more for it, despite this cross country quibble.
Berms, the affliction of the eighties...
(elephant burials in the suburbs, I've designed many of them, whaps self)
Ooooohhhhh, I like berms. I don't think they're necessary and I don't like the straight up and straight down the other side type, but I do like a little height (not much) in a bed.
This oak is in a concret corner made by my parents' driveway and their street. Actually, the driveway is pea stone (or some such). And, berm may not be the right term for this dirt they dumped.
I see on further look it's not surrounded by concrete and does surface drain away.
Forgive me, I've/we've rerouted whole engineered roads and driveways to change new designed grades, massively fixing plans, relative to oaks. (There was the one they were adding six feet of soil atop roots to....)
I just don't know eastern/southern oaks and their needs re impingement, soil levels.
Which berm in Orange County has all the carcasses?
I don't mind gentle ones. Required berms within a, say, 15 foot space, up and down, are, to me, mini miniature golf visited on a tract planet (nothin' if not opinionated).
Agreed..
I've done mandated by city silly ones, back in the day.
Cringe.
My yard, in Cambridge, could use raised beds. The maples there suck the ground dry, the soil is compacted and full of things like spark plugs and iron bolts. And, the garden is completely flat except where they had to build it up for two trees they planted years ago.
I like raised beds, often, if not entirely generally. Mostly. Or a wall with soil
grading down from it, or, "bermed up". The berms that kill me are the miserable stacked (sorta) figure eights on flat landscape just outside of housing tract walls, too horrid to remember...
<nodding>
There, there. <pats Osso on the shoulder> It's all just a bad dream......
Thank you.
Wonder if they're still there.... as wormsicles.
Maybe they've compacted by now....?
After clearing brambles, VA creeper, grasses, etc from the area around the oak and regrading and walling in the oak, we added loam. And planted three pitch pines up on the hill. My mother joined the process and we replanted beach grass pulled out with the other grasses and saved. The replanted beach grass is up high on the hill so as to be seen from the road - it has a very nice look, very shiny and graceful. Then she pulled two viburnum back from an existing garden into the new area and planted two new viburnum of a different variety.
I would check the tire pressure on that back passenger tire. It looks like it is at about 32.5 psi and I fear for improper wear.
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