Operation Smother

This is a garden project post and it's a little long.  But it's where a big chunk of my creative energy has gone recently so deserved a place here on the blog. It wasn't really a "joyful puttering" project...it was more of a mission.  If you're interested....read on.  If not...enjoy the day!

I have lived in this house in Lexington, the Hancock Church parsonage, for 8 years. It's a great house and Paul and I are very happy here.  

I inherited a large neglected garden in the back yard filled with several invasive plants and one kind of ordinary hosta.  I have been reinventing one end closest to the house over the years...weeding out the garlic mustard, lily of the valley, and wild onion and adding a variety of hosta and other shade loving plants. I change it up a little every year. 

This photo below is from last year a little later in the season...but I wanted to set the stage for the project. The ferns that you can see in the middle of the photo on the left are the line. My reinvented garden is on this side of the ferns....the ordinary hosta, lily of the valley, and violets etc are on the other side. All these years I have let the back side do whatever it wanted to do.  

Last summer I gave a woman walking by a tour of the yard. The first thing she said when she saw my back garden was..."oh my you have bishop's weed." If you look back at the photo above...it's blooming right behind the ferns.....you have to look closely.

I had no idea it was yet another invasive plant I inherited.  It wasn't bad looking....it actually had a lovely bloom that looked a lot like Queen Anne's Lace. It was in the back 1/2 of the garden so I didn't worry too much about it.



But  this spring I noticed that it was coming in very thick...and moving vigorously into my tended space. Something had to be done! After doing some research online I collected my materials and "OPERATION SMOTHER" began.

I'm showing the end of my project first...because many times during this process I wondered "WHAT WAS I THINKING!" But for the most part it's done and I'm OK with the result. It's environmentally friendly and...other than being a lot of work it didn't cost anything.

To start with I collected lots of cardboard and newspaper....thanks Linda and Janet for contributing. I marked off the area and had it all weed wacked right down to the ground. The area to the right of the cardboard I will hand dig and keep cleaning up throughout the spring and summer.

I used a smothering technique I learned from a landscaper in Maine that you can read about here.  I covered the ground with cardboard then a thick layer of wet newspaper then a layer of mulch. Do you see why I didn't lead with this photo? It looks pretty sad and hopeless.

Over several days I got 4 car loads of ugly chunky wood chips free from the town transfer facility. You can't shovel this stuff....and a pitch fork only sort of works. But I persisted.

I'm getting there. 

I hated the way the wood chips looked. But lucky for me I had a pile of better looking hemlock mulch in the way back of my yard  left over from several years ago.  I covered the wood chips and it looks much better.

My plan is to let this sit for a year or two and hopefully smother the weed.  At that point I'll plant some sort of shrub or understory tree keeping it simple and heavily mulched. Any sign of it on either side I will tackle by hand.  It may seem kind of stark...but it's really not bad in person. My view from the patio is just as nice as it's ever been.  

I had just finished the project when I took this photo...dirty knees and all.  There's something very satisfying about completing a large, manual labor project. Maybe it's my inner farm girl coming out. I think "operation smother" was a success. but I can see from this photo that I need to clean my patio stones. Oy!

This is what it looks like from the edge of the mulch back right now. The ordinary hosta is growing...and the way back is full of violets and lily of the valley and my compost bin.  I'm still going to leave this part alone for a while...and just try and keep the bishop's weed out as I see it. Maybe someday I'll smother this too.