When I first moved in, eleven years ago, the backyard had a few trees (a sugar maple, redbud and chokecherry), a largish area of lawn, and some non-native shrubs and perennials.
April 2010
A July 2010 visit with my niece Deanna and nephew Christopher in my new backyard.
Rather than cut the grass, I grew pumpkins in the lawn.
And I planted native trees and shrubs, lots of them: sycamore, eastern hemlock, eastern white cedar, serviceberry, pussy willow, alternate-leaved dogwood, 3 paw paws, 3 staghorn sumacs, and American chestnut. (A blue beech came later.)
For the next few years, while the trees were growing and there was still lots of sun, I didn’t really start transforming the understory. I grew a lot of vegetables instead, some in raised beds.
As the trees filled in, the yard started to feel like a forest, and years of building the soil with loads of dead leaves ensued that native woodland perennials could thrive.
Here’s the backyard woodland garden in mid-June this year.
The sycamore, which I planted in 2010 (and can be seen in the photo before this one, in the foreground on the right, with light green leaves), is now the 40-foot-tall beauty with a big honking trunk in this photo. I’m amazed by how much it has grown in just 11 years.