When we finished my friend and scultper’s front garden, she said “What’s next?” We looked at the space and pondered a while. It was her raised bed area before the space became too shady.
Since she shapes clay, I thought it would be fun to shape the ground plane. We decided on the shape of the infinity symbol which appealed to us both. We improvised the shape by adding teardrop-shaped mounds in each of the loops. The ground plane was cleared and we mounded a clay-based soil in the desired shape, then covered it with jute mesh to hold it into place.
We laid granite fines – a very fine sharp gravel – around the mounds and tamped them to make a firm walking surface. A thin layer of decorative gravel on top of this finishes the ground plane.
Although the mounds were only 2′ high at the high point, my friend didn’t feel comfortable stepping over them. So we removed the height in the middle of the loops and replaced it with flat stones. Notice that the top of one loop crosses the concrete patio. Keep going to see how we addressed this!
Our intention all along was to set her sculpture in this space. Here you can see we’ve just started planting.
Initial planting is just about finished. We used creeping sedums, thyme, small sedges, and a few annuals. You can see that we finished the loop over the concrete with moss. It is very happy to grow there and she dug it up out of her woods!
Plants filled in nicely by the end of the first growing season.
