We will consider shape, size, and content here.
For most people, the circle or oval is the most common shape that comes to
mind for a flower island. It helps soften the straight edges of the house and
blunts the straight lines of the roof ridges and drives. You can also be
creative even with a perfect circle because your canvas is the inside of the
circle and not its edges. If your front yard is flat, you can be a bit creative
by building artificial slopes or undulations in the island. This will give the
impression of cutting a disc in your front yard and tilting it to show to
the world with the flare of a gourmet waiter or conjurer. Try to visualize it
for a moment. Use a mirror pivoted at opposite ends and imagine undulations in
the face of the mirror instead of the smooth glass surface. Now imagine
clusters of lush plants sprouting from the surface. Remmember, the tilt is ever
so slight, 20 degrees say, to the flat surrounding.
For size, I usually go with feel. However, try to make it proportional to
the amount of land in the front yard and the size of your building. For a Half
acre front yard, I would make the island 10 ft in diameter. for a 1/4 acre, I
recommend 5ft Dia., and for a 3/4 acre front yard, 15ft. Dia. is reasonable.
For purposes of this project, we will choose a 10 ft. Dia island.
Next, you have to make a decision as to what border you will have. You can
have a border of landscape blocks, a perennial plant like juniper, Dianthus,
or day lillies, or even daffodils, but daffodils go dormant during the winter.
For my project I'm using landscape blocks and day-lillies as lashes for the
island. Lashes meaning I take the island to be an eyeball and one cluster of
day-lillies form one set of lashes over the eyeball. Too bad I dont have two
islands side by side. Come to think of it, that may be overkill. Anyhow, if
you don't want to spend too much on the border, I recommend the perennial.
Landscape blocks come about a foot long and are $2.99 a piece. For a 10ft. Dia.
island you may need 32 blocks per course. A course is a full row of blocks
around the circle. So for 3 courses of block, you will need 96 blocks for a
grand total of about $300.00, add in delivery from the nursery (unless you make
several trips with your Yugo (5 blocks per trip)), and you could be looking
at $400.00. On the other hand, the perennial will cost you $3.00 a piece and
spacing of a foot will require 32 plants and only one course for a grand total
of $96.00. Plus you can transport all of them yourself in the Yugo. I must
tell you though that I wanted block and got a bit creative and only used 70
blocks for $210.00 and my Neighbour was kind enough to loan me his pickup for
goodwill.
I will share with you how I cut the number of blocks and still produced a
knockout island that is not boring. Later.
For what goes inside the island, you can go really crazy. I don't recommend
that for Yahya's gardener at the Kanilai palace. You remmember we said to
create some undulations and miniature slopes in the island if you have flat
land? Well that will give the impression of mounds of clusters of lush life. It
is generaaly more pleasing to the eye to use clusters of the same plant rather
than different plants mixed-in piecemeal to force a colourful variety. The
latter becomes a disjointed hue of cold colour. I know we like our daggit ak
malans to be colourful but trust me, you will be more pleased with clusters of
colour than with lonely variety. Try it on a drawing board. In fact, you
should have your concept and design down on paper as we move on. Suntou we can't
wait for you to get to the Art & Craft shop. Karim will fill you in on what
you missed.
To prepare the island therefore as we envisioned, you will need a spade
(shovel), a pitch fork, and a rake. If you already have ground cover on the site,
remove all the ground cover so you can have fun with the wife and kids
sculpting the surface. Move dirt around to create the unique impression of
miniature mounds and slopes that you desire. Make sure the dirt is loose up to about
5 inches down and the border goes in last. This will only take 2 hours just
transferring what you or your child draws on paper. We will stop here for
now. Preparing to get to this point will take a couple of hours of family fun.
Remmember if there is rain in the forecast, cover the sculpted soil with
plastic until the morrow.
Haruna. New Green Thumb. MQJGDT. Al Mutawakkil.
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