A face lift for an old landscape.

This is what you see as you drive into my driveway. The chair tells you to stop and park at this point, as the driveway goes down to the lake past this juncture. The terrain is crushed stone, pounded down to feel smooth and even to the walker. The trees in the background are all growing down by the lake.

From the street, you can see arbors, chairs, stone benches and flowered pots.

You are invited to stop here and chat before you approach the entrance. All plantings are deer-proof and mostly native to this area. In a few months the arbors will have vines growing above, with profuse flowers blooming from late summers to late fall.

Across the arbors, the house entrance sits at the end of a suspended bridge crossing a dry creek. The pots' colors are blue, sienna red, grey. The gravel is sand/grey; the stones are grey/slate. The star magnolia in the dry creek will bloom from December to February. The Camellia, from October to December.

 The dry creek is made up of sand, rocks, and gravel. Plants and bushes and ferns appear here and there.

Outside the front door, on the far side of the picture, the dry creek under this footbridge spills out on the concrete and meets the arbors at the opposite end.

And finally, a place to turn the car around once out of the garage, or off the concrete pad!

Now, we are going to walk down to the lake, past the boat house, and into the deer-proof enclosure to visit my vegetable/fruit garden.

These rusty chairs will greet you at the entrance. They are supporting  small grape vines too small to stand on their own at this time. The posts are set for a future grape arbor right here.

In this enclosed area I grow my vegetables in raised boxes. I can stand up and putter around with ease. In this box, my salad greens are ready to be thinned. Arugula, fennel, basil, parsley and sage grow among the various musculus mixes. I can decide to harvest just bibb lettuce for a special recipe, or escarole to use in a pasta dish.

Having a variety of greens makes it easy to plan meals.

Notice the bird netting, suspended by a metal pole, to keep birds and other critters out. The boxes will be equipped with drip irrigation on timers. Even if I ended up in a wheelchair, I could still manage to grow my own veggies here.

I have ten boxes, each with different variations. I'm even attempting to grow corn here; though, I don't think I've ever seen corn growing around these parts. This area faces south, and it is protected from the prevailing north winds that blow in summer. I might get lucky!

We spend mornings down here, watering, weeding, planting.
With coffee at hand, we forget the world here,  listening to the ocean, picking berries, weeding roses.

We were meant to be in gardens.

Note: design and construction done by By-the-sea Gardens, in Bandon, and by Mike Hewitt Construction and Excavation in Port Orford. Our thanks to these fine professional for a job well done.