The launch of "Thinking about the Garden" news letter

We are excited to launch our Thinking About the Garden series. Enjoy continuous updates on the progress of Tsuru Island, and we welcome your feedback and appreciate your ongoing support. Enjoy!

Every day I think about the garden and that may involve something that we recently accomplished, something that we are planning on doing or what it will be like when we are done. I am just fooling myself on the last example, because we will never be done. I say that because the type of garden that is planned includes the ongoing maintenance of the garden as part of the garden building process. This garden will evolve over time and it will require pruning, moving plants, the re-setting of boulders, placement of new features and the removal of ones that become out of touch with the visitor.

When we first started the garden project it was hard to figure out what that blank page was going to be like let alone what it might look like in the projected 5 years before significant completion. To get to the blank page state we had to remove truck load after truck load of debris from the interior and the areas surrounding the island. We no more got some of the unwanted vegetation under control and a new growing season began and here it came again. Week after week and hundreds of volunteer hours later it is now clean and under control, for the most part.

Issues that we have addressed include the erosion of the east end of the island which has lost an estimated 100 cubic yards of soils from the end and sides. This issue has not be helped by the added erosion that has taken place from water running off of the top, down the sides and into the creek, that water coming from rain accumulations during the 30-35 winters since the first garden was constructed. The effects of the erosion included tree roots being exposed, flattened areas being created and then being used by visitors for access which caused compaction of the soil in that area.

To alleviate the run off we have installed a curtain or wick drain that is placed in a trench that we have put around the outer edge of the island. The drain material takes the place of what is known as a French drain. This drain material is 1-inch wide by 6-inches tall and is placed 2-inches below grade. The outer shell of the drain product is a fabric that will allow water to pass but will not clog with sediment or clay while the water passes through the cloth to the sub soil and is absorbed with the extra amounts of water going to a rain garden created in another area of the garden.