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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

February Has Lots Of Time To Plot, Plan

Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-

February can be such a costly month. Though it’s too cold to be outdoors, it’s plenty warm inside perfect for daydreaming. But my daydreams aren’t about vacations or golfing. They’re about all the exciting changes that could be made in the garden. As I sit here, staring out my living room window, certain areas of the front yard jump out at me, begging for help.

My principal concern right now is the area along the very front edge of our yard. It faces a sort-of-asphalt country road. Separating the road from our yard is an 8-foot-wide, 2-1/2-foot deep, 90-foot-long drainage ditch. It should not be confused with those gentle swales you see covered in soft, green grass. It’s a ditch - a long, open, dry, backbreaking ditch. At the top of its west bank is our lawn.

The ditch is home to a fine collection of obnoxious weeds and any other drifters that care to drop in for the summer. You may be familiar with some of these toughies - knapweed, thistle, black medic, quackgrass, knotweed and scores of others. How anything can grow in this parched concrete is beyond me. But not only do they grow, they seem to flourish.

For the first few years, I painstakingly weeded this albatross. Weeding not only included the ditch, but also the shoulder of the road. As my neighbors drove by, I am sure they thought I wasn’t working with a full load. After all, with all the other garden chores to accomplish, who in their right mind would take time to weed the road? I always felt that the ditch was the first thing you saw when you approached the house. It had to be weeded.

As the years went by and our four boys grew older, I “coaxed” them into helping me with this chore. “If we all work together, we can get it done in a half-an-hour.”

To this day, they taunt me with those words any time there’s a difficult task to be accomplished. For not only was it not accomplished in a half-hour, it wasn’t unusual to spend a full day weeding the gully, as it affectionately became known.

The weeds cemented their roots into the ground, making them as difficult as nails to pull. Many a time one of us would go flying head over heels, holding nothing more then a fist full of stems and leaves. The stubborn roots left behind would soon produce a whole new crop, as if to say “we’re baaack.”

If you’re wondering why I didn’t use herbicides to kill the weeds, I did. I sprayed the ground with Triox and Noxall, two ground sterilents, but the weeds just kept coming.

About 10 years ago, I decided to fight back by sprucing up our side of the bank with four well-spaced tam junipers and a thick groundcover called Creeping Jenny. The groundcover was touted as being hardy, drought-tolerant and a super weed suppressant. Ah, huh … I don’t think Creeping Jenny ever had to compete with the likes of my country roughians.

I did have to give the Jenny an “A” for trying, though. It spread quickly into a thick, green mat, dotted with tiny yellow flowers. It grew into the shrubs and the lawn. The carpet was so thick, the only way to remove its matted root system was to dig it out in huge clumps. It massed the west bank, the bottom of the ditch and slowly crept toward the road. You would have thought this massive mat of greenery would have been the answer to this dreaded piece of ground. But no. Even though the groundcover filled the gully, the weeds continued to grow. Now we were faced with digging weeds and weedy grasses out of the groundcover.

After many discouraging years, the groundcover is now a mixture of black medic, quackgrass, cheatgrass and a host of other weeds. Two of the shrubs were dinner for resident pocket gophers and a couple of colonies of wasps have set up housekeeping in the bank, under the groundcover.

Thanks to a wintery February, I think I’ve come up with a super plan. This year, the gully is going to have a face lift. The groundcover and the two remaining tams will be out. The ditch and its shoulder will be stripped clean of all intruders. I’ll haul in rocks by the truck load to build a stately rock wall. It’ll be anchored to the bottom of the ditch and climb straight up three feet. The area behind the wall will be filled in with rich compost and garden soil, leveling out to meet the grass. In the four-foot planting zone, I’ll set three Blue Star junipers for winter interest, along with pockets of creeping phlox mixed with bouquets of silver mound and colorful petunias. With an application of pre-emergence and a watchful eye for any intruders, the gully and shoulder should remain clean.

All I have to do now is figure out how to get this idea past my husband Jim.

“Really dear, if we work together it shouldn’t take more than half-an-hour.

, DataTimes MEMO: Phyllis Stephens is a horticultural consultant and landscape designer in Spokane.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-Review

Phyllis Stephens is a horticultural consultant and landscape designer in Spokane.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-Review