Just a little Hosta garden

After five years, here is the result of our hosta garden.

It was the summer when the economy started going down hill, my husband was laid off and I work at our town's grade school. Without receiving many paychecks during the summer, projects were put on the back burner.  I had gathered so many different hostas, daylillies and rocks throughout the years, I decided to create a hosta garden in the only "shade" area at our place.  The hostas were already free, split them out and in 3 years, it should fill out pretty good, right?

My husband didn't care about another garden, it was just that much less we had to mow.  So I took our tiller and started in and 35x35 feet later I was done.  I stood at the corner and thought "What in the world was I thinking!"  My husband stepped outside, shook his head and went back inside. 

Now that this garden was just a little larger than plan, I had to try and figure out how to fill the space.  Why not have a type of sitting area and maybe a small pond, those would be great fillers.  We had this very old sidewalk that went to an old chicken coop that is no longer there.  I had my son Jake take a sledge hammer to the sidewalk, pulled out the bigger pieces and we placed them into a small square patio.  I mean what else was we going to do with that old cement so let's recycle it.

Then came the pond, I stood there with the shovel and out comes my husband.  Bless his heart, he steps in and starts digging.  He dug two deep holes in the pond in hopes of having fish.  We wanted to make sure the fish had somewhere to go if they encountered the neighborhood raccoons during the night.

As I started bring the rocks from my other gardens over.  I had so many rocks, we were able to create a type of waterfall.  The only things we had to buy were small slabs of slate from a quarry, water pump and a liner.  After laying the liner down, we positioned the rocks, outlining the pond.  We carefully stacked the rocks and slate slabs to create the waterfall and it worked out great!  We gave gold fish just one try and after they died two days later, that idea was done.  Also I have a real issue with green water so what I do to keep the pond clean is to use pool shock.  Sprinkle a little shock in the water every couple weeks, run it through the pump and the water stays crystal clear.

I knew it would take a few years for the hostas to fill in but I'm really happy on how it turned out.  It looked great for Jake's graduation.