When our house was finally being built in 2014, I asked the excavators to finish the driveway by circling it around halfway up the property, about where the house would go, thereby creating a garden island. About half the island was buckthorn, red twig dogwood, sumac and small trees (basswood, maple, ironwood, juniper) and the other half was grass, where we parked and lived in a trailer while the house was built. My plan, after the trailer was moved, was to make the entire island one large micro garden.
In 2017 and 2018, much of my gardening efforts went into this Island, planting shrubs, transplanting perennials, laying pathways, cutting out buckthorn and sumac, spreading native perennial seeds and planting a few vegetables amongst it all. Then letting things grow and, in 2019, watching how the Island had evolved by itself through shrub and tree growth and perennial self-seeding. These Island pages are a photographic essay on the ever changing Island.
County Gardening 