The director of facilities has agreed to help sponsor a new design for the backyard, since one was never really put into space. Avid readers (if I have any) will remember that I already did some planting in the backyard. This would be an expansion of what's already there. The tricky part of the EcoHouse backyard is that it's not just shady. It's got a variety of different sun levels. It actually makes the project a little more fun, however. This is a rough I compiled of the things that have already been planted in the backyard (click to see the whole picture):
It's pretty rough in terms of presentation, but the location of everything is accurate. The grey represents shaded areas, and the dark grey on the sides represents the sidewalk. The lower left corner of the yard tents to accumulate a lot of water because of the location of the downspout (the long brown rectangle) so I've been looking into moisture tolerant plants. So far, using suggestions from the DNR and availability at the Outback Nursery (just for example prices) I've compiled a database of plants categorized by their of shade, moisture, type, size, and overall benefits. I'm still finalizing this list, but once I have the plants I really want, I'll draft a couple planting plans.
What I think we're going to try (since there's still a great deal of weeds in the yard) is using weed killer on the more troublesome plants and weeding the rest. There's a whole lot of creeping charlie that I'll cut back and then spray. Herbicides and weed killers are a tricky choice. Whenever possible it's better to just weed or cut back the problem plant, but sometimes the only way to stop them from coming back is by spraying. When used in small quantities, they don't do nearly as much damage.
The other issue I've been dealing with is chipmunks. In addition to poor soil, the South bed has a chipmunk neighbor. It's been eating all the little plant sprouts so that they don't even have a chance to survive. So how do you get rid of chipmunks? Well, the simple solution is to trap them. You can use live traps or deadly traps. But then what if they come back? Where one chipmunk was another is sure to appear, right? So other suggestions online were using predator urine (like fox or wolf urine, found at many hunting stores) which tend to scare away any pests. When my family got a cat, he was the most effective chipmunk trap we ever had. While we never found bodies of rodents (thank god) he certainly kept them away for our yard and our neighbors. So I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I'll probably do a combination, with help of the facilities department.
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