The Dirt: The Proper Order of Things

Whether you just bought a house that was sitting empty for months (or years) or have concentrated on the inside, giving the outside (maybe) a little bit of love once a year, there will come a time when you step out, look at your yard and get somewhat consterned. Bald spots, weed lots, crazy vines, muddy puddles may seem like plant problems, but they are often caused by poor hardscape choices that make maintenance a difficult and lengthy, sometimes impossible, chore.

The first step is to assess recurring issues: Does it leak into your basement every time it rains heavily? Do the plants in that one corner look sickly and die, year after year? Do you never use the steps of a path but rather cut across a planted area, tracking mud in the house? Does weeding take entire weekends that merge into Sisyphean labor? These are all design problems.

When you look at hardscape choices (fences, patios, decks, paths, lighting and irrigation), there is a better physical order:

• From the outside in (so you don’t trample something new to fix or install what’s beyond)
• From the ground up
• And by material hardness (from steel and concrete to stone and wood, finishing with plants).

You can see that it is impossible to be perfect at this; it is just like circling the square, as much art as science.  For example, fences are usually made of wood, and yet they are on the outside perimeter, so they should be done first.  Well, that is, except if you are significantly altering the grade and pitch of your backyard.  Shouldn’t you start from the ground up? (Yes.)

In some ways, you can look at your outdoor space like you would your house, and just like you wouldn’t place your couch in the middle of your hallway, you shouldn’t plant a tree in the middle of your yard. Instead, you want to look at where is the sun coming from, where are you going to be lounging, whether you like to be in the full sun when you eat or relax, and place trees accordingly.  In addition to creating rooms and managing passages from one to the other, you have the added concerns of rainwater flow and maintaining living plants. Yes, it’s complicated.

The way I proceed as a designer is dictated by “how hard is it to fix?” Moving, adding or subtracting smaller plants is very easy, and I can reset a stone patio, or elevate a retaining wall — it might take a week, but the end result is immediately perfect.  On the other hand, it’s hard to replant a mature tree or vine — they might take two or three years to fully recover. It’s also less than ideal to replace a fence and dig new posts where you have established plants, some of which will resent being moved. And you can’t change the grade and pitch of a backyard without removing almost everything, breaking things down, banking plants in containers, and then moving massive amounts of soil, creating French drains, and finally reinstalling what you carefully removed in the first place. Keeping this in mind, this is the general order of things:

1. Soil grade and pitch
2. Retaining wall
3. Fences
4. Paths
5. Patio
6. Deck
7. Electrical work
8. Irrigation
9. Light carpentry
10. Planting

When I first showed my pictures to a website designer a few years back, she exclaimed that I must really love dirt, that’s all I ever photograph.  I tried to explain, “yes, but this dirt is terrible, and look how improved this new dirt picture is! Underneath this dirt there are bluestones buried in silt, while that dirt picture has 4 inches of gravel two feet down to manage rainwater overflow!” and realized the futility of the endeavor.

When most people think of gardens, they think of flowers and colors; I look at gardens and think of water run-offs, alkaline soils, natural grade, French drains and pass-through corridors. The flowers will come easily if everything else is done right.

I have since learned that of course she is right, so no picture of dirt for you; please enjoy this beautiful picture of my first tomato.  I ate it on Monday.

The Dirt is a monthly column that explores gardening in Brooklyn by Brownstoner commenter and Brooklyn garden designer Marie-Helene Attwood of  Edible Petals. Each month, she will answer any questions about Brooklyn gardening over the following weekend.