What do you do when you have large new borders to fill and would rather not A,  spend much money or B,  wait forever for them to look good? Steal like crazy from other parts of the garden – if you’re lucky to have an old garden that has plenty of divisions and too-big castaways to spare.

So as I wrote about on GardenRant, landscape architect Billy Goodnick drew me this cool plan for my ex-lawn – greatly enlarging my existing borders and reducing the lawn-like area to not much more than a path.   So, where to start? First I used stakes and then orange marking paint to create the new border – that’s easy enough.  But now it’s mid-March and time to fill ‘em up.

The first photo is of the right-hand border (seen from the house and also on Billy’s sketch). You see the orange lines and the junipers I planted there yesterday. They spent the winter potted-up on my front porch, and seem to tolerate being moved every spring to the back yard to make room for Fun with Annuals on my front porch.

Also on the right are two large, severely cut-back grasses of some sort (varieties of Miscanthus, now forgotten), which were too big for their spots somewhere else, and I envision them draping gracefully over this large pot that will be trying to fulfill Billy’s vision of a focal point.  Then behind all that are 3 year-old Itea ‘Little Henry’ which don’t look like much yet and I’ve decided I need 3 more of same to fill the area and mimic the kind of massing Billy suggests.  What’ll go along the front of the border is anybody’s guess at this point.

And any ideas for what to put in the big pot?

Then in the lower photo here you see the lefthand border where I’ve moved the full-grown spirea to another focal point, and the enlarged border now jumps over the dry streambed (something I’d never have thought to do). To fill up the new space I planted some large carexes (including some that are blizzard-battered but presumaby capable of recovering), lots of smaller ‘Ice Dance’ carexes, and a flowing mass of lamb’s ears along the new edge of the border. The stepping stones WILL be moved and relaid to follow the center of the new lawn-like path through the garden.

So, any more ideas for filling up new borders for the Impatient Gardener?

Feeling a bit sluggish about  now, deprived of gardening for all these months?  Me, too!  But not as sluggish as I’d be feeling if I didn’t have THE PROGRAM.   That’s what I call my ever-increasing compilation of exercises that a bevy of physical therapists has devised for me over the years.

Exercise for the gym-averse

See all my exercise toys?  They’re cost under 150 bucks and with a little training in their use, comprise everything a gardener needs to stay fit – just add cardio.  So if, like me, you’d rather not spend money on health clubs you’ll use for a  month, or even if you DID go to the club you’d really rather not exercise with the sweaty young crowd there, no problem!  Do-it-at-homers can get just as much done – with practically NO excuse for ever skipping a day.

So here’s my routine:

• Every single fricking day, right after reading my email and the NYTimes online, I get on the treadmill, with coffee mug in hand, for 45 minutes of fast walking.  What makes this tolerable – nay, even enjoyable – is the television you see here, on which I play tapes of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, an assortment of PBS shows and even the occasional network show (I’m loving “Modern Family”).  Oh, and how can I forget Netflix?  Good lord, what a great service!  I’m currently racing through the fifth season of “Weeds”, thanks to those red envelopes of happiness.
• Also every day, I do a bunch of stretches and some Pilates core-strengthening exercises.   (Once you’ve discovered your “core”, you’ll never want to go back to your old, slouching, flaccid-muscled state.)
• Every other day I use those dumbbells and stretch bands and that cool “therapy ball” to staunch the muscle-deteriorating trend that kicked in big-time in middle age.   “Use it or lose it” turned out to be one of the better slogans from the ’70s.

That’s it.  Plus in season, gardening my ass off, as we say in the  GardenRant Manifesto.   So what do YOU do to keep your boding from wasting away in the winter?

Photo above right:  The view from the treadmill.  The TV is mandatory, lazy cat optional.

Jeez, I just noticed it’s been over a week since I’ve posted here – bad blogger!  Well, my article in Fine Gardening finally arrived, so here’s a teaser photo.

In the article, I cover a bunch of options for replacing turfgrass with similar-but-easier short groundcovers.  Like?  Thyme, mazus, creeping Jenny (where it can be contained), dwarf cinquefoil, Sedum acre, and good old Dutch white clover.

I posted an overview of the backyard transformation to Sedum acre and clover here, with before, during and after shots, and wide views from the deck.  And on the right is another view of the same garden, just how it’ll look in a couple of months when 3 feet of snow is a distant memory.  Cannot come soon enough.

Waaay back in June of '09 I had a whole day to kill in Los Angeles, with no family-wedding happenings til dinnertime.  I'd already spent a glorious free day with Shirley Bovshow in her garden and being escorted by her around the Huntington Garden.  I just knew that come wintertime, I'd get around to writing about my day at Universal Studio-Hollywood, and that day's come, y'all, coz I still have 2 feet of white stuff covering my garden.

Fun Was Definitely Had
I have to say, if Universal doesn't know how to show you a good time, nobody does.  Even at $69 for the day, it was worth it for the rides, the animal shows, even for "Water World", a really bad movie that's enjoying a second life as a fun live show.   (Top photo.) 

My favorite was the studio tour of the back lot where dozens of my favorite movies and TV shows were filmed.  Above you see the original Bates Hotel from "Psycho", with a real-life Norman-impersonator giving us a quick reenactment.  "Desperate Housewives" fans will recognize these landscapes, part of a whole streetful of horticultural fripperies on Wisteria Lane (below).

On a Serious Note

But how's Universal doing on all the issues of the day?  Looks like they're aware of needing to green up their act and they've won some environmental award, the first to a theme park, and so that's good to know.   And the staff are super-friendly and the whole park immaculate (Take that, Disney!) 

So really I have only one nit to pick and it couldn't be more timely, what with the launch of the First Lady's anti-childhood-obesity program.  It's the park's all-you-can-eat deal – touted in the web page below.  I hate to think how much crap people are stuffing into their mouths, trying to make sure they get their money's worth.  And I say that as an occasional junk-food-eater myself – no purist here!

My adventures in video continue!  After all my troubles buying the wrong stuff, it came time to learn to DO something.  My first grown-up move was to admit that when it comes to either hardware OR software, I'm not what you would call an autodidact.  So I ignored the advice of my videographer friends to "Just do it" and signed up at the nearest teaching facility that looked promising.  (After my Photoshop class at the nearest community college ended up teaching me exactly nothing I needed to know, I learned to do some research before payment.)

So voila the film school - Docs in Progress, a nonprofit promoting and teaching the art of documentary-making, and it's right in my 'hood.  I caught one of their free salons – on the subject of point of view – and noticed the atmosphere was welcoming to beginners.  Same thing at the work-in-progress screenings they hold at the Geo. Wash. U. Film Department. (The screening I saw included a rousing 3-camera-crew doc about Obama's inauguration.)

So I signed up for their "Film Production" class – really a workshop because only the first class is classroom-style.  The instructor (Adele Schmidt in the photo right) has created over a dozen films for PBS, so has actual cred as a  filmmaker .  Now, can she teach?

Class One – The Rules

Turns out the workshop is rigidly defined and limited by rules.  With the 3 video teams having only 6 classes and the weeks between to plan, film, edit and show a 3-4 minute video, ya gotta have limits.  I totally support that.  But it's scary to only be allowed to shoot 30 minutes of video.  Oh, we can shoot more if we want, but it won't be downloaded for editing (gotcha!).  Up to 3 still photos can be used, as well as a limited amount of music.   Also, we can only use one location, and we have to use their cameras and editing equipment.  Kinda like those survivor-type reality shows, and may the best team win!

The Hiphop Garden Production Company is Born

I swear I had nothing to do with being paired with Mario Starks, my smart, savvy and personable partner – we were teacher-assigned.  He's a young web designer in the nonprofit world using his off-hours to inspire people his age to acquire the skills they need.  He's also part of Global Soul Power, which showcases the "creative works of musicians, filmmakers, writers, and activists who promote world awareness messages of unity, self-respect and peace."  Good lord, how cool is that?

Asked what our new "film production company" should be called, the class decided quickly – Hiphop Garden.  Okay!

Our Assigned Topic? A Civic Center

At first I thought the other two teams had been given much more promising, artsier topics – a local stage for plays, and an artist (of some sort).  (All subjects were in Downtown Silver Spring.)  Our topic was to interview a government worker about a new government building.  Oh, goody.  Like that's anything new in this government town (DC and 'burbs.)

But we did the research about this new civic center and the guy in charge of getting it ready for its July 1 launch, and learned it's intended as a "tool for social transformation" and that the "government worker" is an experienced community organizer.  So when we met political appointee Reemberto Rodriguez  we were pleasantly surprised by his friendliness and dreams for the project's impact on the town.  Like the image of Latin Americans gathering in the large outdoor theater to watch the World Cup, or seniors hanging out in the media room and picking up skills – cool images of a lively communal space.  But really, you can build a wonderful facility – indoors and out – but it'll only succeed if people use it.  So he knows he has his work cut out for him – and he's super-happy that we're creating a little video to help publicize it.  (We learned that these student projects sometimes end up on websites, like this one for a tap-dance company.)

But can it Compete with Astroturf?

Turns out there's an interesting landscape-related twist on our story.  This this isn't just any government building we're talking about but one replacing an incredibly successful public "garden" called the "Silver Spring Lawn", though the lawn was a fake.  That's right – the entire site was covered with synthetic turf for a couple of years waiting for the project to begin and to everyone's surprise, it became a wildly popular space to hang out.  Reports in the local media included residents' rhapsodizing over its utter fakeness – no grass stains!  No bugs!  Landscape architects despaired at the popularity of something so devoid of actual plants, with several long reports on its popularity in Landscape Architecture Magazine, no less.

Next – the Interview w/B-Roll
More rules come into play the next time we meet with Reemberto because we can use only 40% of our 30-minutes of video interviewing him (only 12 minutes~!) and have to use the rest for B-roll (background shots).  But Mario and I dutifully did our homework – creating a list of shots and questions for Reemberto – and I'll report back after we've nailed those 30 minutes, so stay tuned.  It's not like you're gardening anyway, right?

Astroturf photo by M. V. Jantzen.