No, really. It will happen. Stars will collide, mountains will crumble, seas will rise and the unthinkable will occur right here in Salt Lake City.
I'm going to make a garden design ...
... AND STICK TO IT.
After five years of meticulously measuring and mapping garden sites, obsessively researching plants and sketching shade projections using actual math, only to find none of my selections available at any nurseries and thus being forced to buy whatever hodgepodge of scraggly crap happens to be on sale lest my naked-dirt yard become a target for the insufferable narks who frequent the pedestrian route on my street for no higher purpose than to rat decent people out to the City Code Enforcement Office,
(breathe)
I am making a usable design for my hellstrip.
No expense will be spared. If I have to order all of my plants on the stupid Internet and pay a bajillion dollars in shipping, so be it. If I have to halt planting in mid-April because some bunchgrass I planned to use inexplicably goes out of stock everywhere, FINE. I'll throw down mulch to satisfy City Code Lady and spend the summer re-drawing the damn plan.
I will not allow one impulse purchase to sully my dreams. I will not substitute some marginally-hardy, water-sucking piece of junk just so I can flirt with the sales guys at a garden center that keeps one sad table of overpriced natives around for the die-hard greenies. Take your foxglove and shove it. I'm sticking to the plan, Stan.
That means I gotta make my plan.
I am taking my design instruction from the indispensable Landscaping on the New Frontier: Waterwise Design for the Intermountain West. They suggest making a design for the whole property, which probably is wise, but there's no freaking way. My biggest mistake as a gardener has been biting off more than I can chew. Yeah, yeah, it's *just* a parking strip. But this sumbitch is 92 feet long. So I'm sticking to the parking strip and guestimating the yard for reference.
Now that I've drawn in all the pre-existing plants (and a boulder), the book said I should make some swirly whirlies to represent tall places and short places.
Well, God. I don't know. In the book, they just look like pretty line drawings. Are we supposed to assume a pretty line drawing from above will look pretty from the ground? I dunno.
I guess I like paisley?
Ummm ... dark parts are short and lighter parts are taller ... I guess??? I'm not sure it gives me a feel for the highs and lows of everything. But the sample pictures in the book don't give me a distinct sense of relief either. Which parts are tall? I just see blobs.
Well, OK. At least I have a start. Oops. I cut my picture 10 feet short. Try again tomorrow.
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