Student Garden

Each student garden was no more than 25 feet wide by 50 feet long. My garden plot was bordered by three other gardens: two on each long side, and one at the rear. One end was open to a grassy walkway, and served as the entrance.

I wanted to grow a lot of different plants, and to do this in one garden and have the plants work well together aesthetically, I decided to create zones, and grow different types of plants in each zone. This allowed me to create separate mini-gardens within one larger garden. It also had the benefit of keeping related plants together for ease of management.

The entrance was set off by a concrete bar set in the ground. The walkway was made of wood chip mulch, as this was the most readily available material, and the easiest material to install and remove. I put a weed mat under the mulch to keep the mulch from getting buried in the clay soil underneath. At the end of the internship, the garden would be taken down, and the wood chips would be collected easily with the help of the weed mat, and then dumped into the compost pile.

Because rocks of different colors were available that normally aren't found where I live, I decided to find a way to use them. The green and somewhat eerie-looking rock was serpentine, probably mined from a nearby quarry next to a serpentine barren. Serpentine rock is commonly used in Pennsylvania on the exterior of houses as a facing material. The irregularly-shaped green rock was used as edging material to line the main path and set off the side beds. The pink granite oblongs and black basalt squares were mixed together in the center island to form a patio.

The garden path formed a continuous loop, to allow entry and exit while keeping the viewer walking through the garden without needing to turn around to exit. Rather than being perfectly round, the path is almost shaped like a question mark. It was not initially planned to be a question mark; however, I did want a central patio, and I didn't really want the patio to be rigidly round with a straight path leading to it. The final design resulted in a more flowing way to move about the garden.

Most plants were found in abandoned plots elsewhere on the property. Sometimes I knew what the plants were; sometimes, they just looked different from the grasses and weeds, and I decided to dig them up and plant them and see what they turn out to be when they matured. Each was assigned to one of the zones listed in the left column.

Each zone was divided by a hardscaping feature. Most of the dividers were irregularly placed pink concrete blocks of various shapes mixed together. These were set into the ground about an inch deep, and surrounded by woodchip mulch. The spacers, I thought, were interesting in themselves, and also allowed me to access each zonal garden without needing to step into the growing area and compress the soil.

The entire garden was lined with landscape timber, to separate it from the adjacent gardens. About a foot of space was left to provide passage along the edge of the garden.

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