We had a large newly created yard and I have a love of flowers so I naturally desired a flower garden. The problem was that the fill that was trucked in to create this yard was all chunks of blacktop and concrete with a light sprinkling of top soil to cover the chunks. There was no digging into the dirt without hitting something solid. We couldn't even drive in a tent stake.

The town workers were scraping the sides of the roads after a long winter of sanding icy and snowy roads. They had two loads of roadside dirt they wanted to dump that looked like pretty good dirt so I let them dump it in a pile in the back of the yard.

After staring at the pile for some time, I began to see a fish pond and perennial garden in the dirt. My husband and I started working moving the dirt around to form a bowl in the center and grading the dirt away where the flowers would be planted. A flower bed would be wonderful, but with a pond in the center it will be even better.

Because we didn't know what we were doing, we used a grey plastic tarp for a liner. It worked well for two years. The spring of the third year we replaced it with rubber pond liner which will last many years. We purchased a pump and a filter so we could keep fish.

We had a fairly large pile of limestone rocks left over from an old rock wall. These rocks became the border for our perennial garden. My sister has horses and a nice pile of old horse manure. She graciously brought me a pickup truck load of manure which we mixed in the dirt. There is a recycling plant nearby that makes compost so we got a load of it to help improve the soil.

Another sister was cleaning out her perennial beds in the fall and throwing out a lot of overgrown plants which made great starter plants for me. I filled the back of my truck and brought them home to their new bed. I placed the plants in the ground for the winter. In the spring I divided the plants up and spread them out and had a great start on my flower bed.

Each year since then I add a few plants purchased at flower shows, the grocery store, and nurseries. Ive also traded many plants with others happy to get different plants than they have. Now, seven years later, I am enjoying seven flower beds created basically the same way with beautiful flowers blooming from April through October.

Copyright 2006 Alice Scott

Alice Scott

Alice Scott is the partner and mother of Michele Redmond. Together they own and operate Solutions Medical Billing in Rome NY and two websites offering help in many areas.