Dirty Little Secrets of Landscaping Prep
Welcome back to our journey to building our medicinal garden! Last post I showed you some before pictures of our front yard landscaping.
Do you agree that the curb appeal is a disaster?! It makes me cringe just thinking about it. As you know, we are working to get those pesky rhododendron roots yanked out without busting any windows, damaging our foundation, or getting into something scary that we weren't planning for.
Regardless, I wanted to share a few dirty little secrets I've been learning throughout this entire process. After countless hours of research and consulting with family and friends that are avid home gardeners, I've learned about some tools that really help get the job done when it comes to preparation. There are two tools in particular that I don't know how we've never owned before. I was lucky on both of our buys on these tools since we have discount stores near us that we can grab some overstock items at really great prices. I spent a total of $25 total for both of these tools. Basically, a two for one kind of deal only better!
The first tool that I came to learn about was a garden edging shovel. My boss actually gave me some advice and suggested that I get one of these to make crisp flower bed edging and boy was she right! This is one of the very first flower beds I started. You can see how crisp the edging is from the shovel (don't mind the orange landscape paint and dirt everywhere!).
The edging shovel is a smaller, square, flat end shovel. You can get one like it on Amazon or at your local home improvement store. Courtenay over at Creek Line House has a short tutorial on garden edging with this shovel, which was extremely helpful. We have a bunch of other edging techniques pinned to our Pinterest board as well! Click HERE to see the board!
The second tool that we couldn't live without is a drain spade. It's basically a shovel with a long, rounded, narrow end. It works great for digging perfect circular holes. We actually used ours to plant our cherry blossom trees and all of our green giant arborvitae. You can get one like it on Amazon as well if you're an order online person like me, or again at your local home improvement store. This shovel also come in handy for shoveling out for drainage. Can you guess where it gets its name?!
Now that you have some essential tools under you're tool belt, you're almost ready to start planting your medicinal plants. Be sure to visit our Medicinal Plant Pinterest Board for some of our favorite tutorials as well as sneak peak into some of the plants that will debut in our medicinal garden!
Until then...
Be Natural. Be Honest. Be Healthy.
Bri
