The garden the deer walk through

A new-build on a ridge with resident deer, a west-facing slope, and no soil to speak of after construction.

This is the youngest garden on this page and it is here deliberately, because a young garden is what a young garden looks like, and pretending otherwise is this industry's whole problem.

The deer here are not visitors. They bed down on the property. So the plant list was written around them from the first draft rather than corrected afterwards — no hostas, no roses, no arborvitae, nothing that would need spraying every three weeks for the rest of the owners' lives.

The soil was the real work. A new-build ridge lot after construction is subsoil compacted by tracked machinery, and no plant list survives that. We decompacted to eighteen inches across the planted areas and imported three hundred yards of compost, which was twenty-two per cent of the budget and is the reason anything is alive.

Across 3 years

Every frame is labelled. The build photographs are in here too, because the fortnight where a garden is a trench is part of what you are buying.

Rows of young shrubs in black plastic nursery pots standing close together on the ground at a growing nursery, each perhaps two feet tall with thin new growth. — Delivery dayThe size most things arrive at. A small plant overtakes a large one inside four years and costs a third as much.

Coarse fresh bark chippings filling the frame, pale tan and dry on top, with fragments of split wood and a few dead leaves caught in the surface. — Year one, AprilForty per cent of a new bed looks like this. That is correct spacing, not a shortage of plants.

Overlapping ribbed hosta leaves filling the frame in layered greens, each leaf marked with deep parallel veins. — Year two, JuneFoliage works for ten months of the year and flowers work for two. We design the ten months first.

Planting plan1" = 12'

Key — drawn at mature spread

ARA×3Arctostaphylos × 'Austin Griffiths' — manzanita
CET×2Ceanothus thyrsiflorus 'Victoria' — California lilac
MAA×2Berberis aquifolium — tall Oregon grape
MAN×2Berberis nervosa — Cascade Oregon grape
SEA×3Sesleria autumnalis — autumn moor grass
ERU×2Eriogonum umbellatum — sulphur buckwheat
ARU×2Arctostaphylos uva-ursi — kinnikinnick
GAS×2Gaultheria shallon — salal

Solid outlines are evergreen. Dashed outlines lose their leaves — which is what a plan should tell you before you build it, not after your first winter.

The ground, and the water

Compacted construction subsoil. Decompacted to eighteen inches, three hundred yards of compost incorporated, and no irrigation planned beyond establishment.

Temporary drip for three summers, designed to be removed. The planting is chosen so that it does not need permanent irrigation once established, which on a west-facing ridge means accepting a narrower plant list.

What we would do differently

Nothing yet, and that is not a boast — it is too early to know. Ask us in year five. The honest answer while it is this young is that we will not know whether the manzanitas are in the right place until they have been through a wet winter with mature root systems.

The backbone of the planting

ARAArctostaphylos × 'Austin Griffiths'manzanita8 × 7 ft at maturity
CETCeanothus thyrsiflorus 'Victoria'California lilac8 × 8 ft at maturity
MAABerberis aquifoliumtall Oregon grape7 × 5 ft at maturity
MANBerberis nervosaCascade Oregon grape2.5 × 3 ft at maturity
SEASesleria autumnalisautumn moor grass1.5 × 2 ft at maturity
ERUEriogonum umbellatumsulphur buckwheat1.5 × 2.5 ft at maturity
ARUArctostaphylos uva-ursikinnikinnick0.8 × 6 ft at maturity
GASGaultheria shallonsalal4 × 6 ft at maturity

Yours would be drawn the same way.

A measured base plan, a planting plan at mature spread, and a written note on what the garden will look like in year one so that nothing about the first winter is a surprise.

Start a design See the other gardens