Before Landscaping Photo taken with 35mm film camera
In this early garden photo you can see two cats enjoying the garden. One cat was my cat and the other was a cat that was a friend of my cat, named Plum. The other cat was very shy, and I could not get a closer picture of her. I believed this other cat with related to my cat Plum because we found Plum as a kitten near out house. You can see a large Euonymus Bush, a Hollywood Juniper that was filled with many spiders, and the Agapanthus. The large tree is in the right hand corner and large Acacia tree is in the left back. There is an attractive peach ablution, but it later broke off in a wind storm and would not grow back. As you can see, I have not yet put in a lawn. The Pampas Grass is visible near the back fence and there is something, that could be the peach tree, but I can't make it out. These plants were very difficult to remove, but we did remove them slowly and replace them with plants we liked better. None of the original plants remain in my garden.
When I first moved into the house in the early 1990's. The garden was very over grown with weeds. It would be difficult to get started on the garden so I put off working on the garden for a while. I later I began to add plants to the planter box areas in both the front and in the back. There were many snails in the garden and there were a lot of rocks that were used to create a succulent mound, but the mound of filled with so many weeds, I could not weed it. So I took out the rocks and the mound. There was a small peach tree, but the leaves were very diseased and appeared to have bumps and deformation. So, I cut this tree down and replaced with a Pink Asian magnolia. The peaches were not good for eating and there were thousands of peach pits that I had to pick up one by one. There was a big tree that was very new the deck, that would need to be pruned. It had 13 trucks because someone had cut it down before it grew back. It was weed tree and I was allergic to the leaves. But, we keep the tree for a few years. There were many wild onions and white calla lilies that had to be dug out by hand. It was so much unending work. So we decided to have a lawn put in to take care of all the weeds. We had to add a sprinkler system. The company we hired did a poor job with the installation of the lawn and the sprinklers. But, for many years we had a lawn, but we had to do much maintenance. We moved a pink dwarf camilla Nuccio's Pearl in as our first new plant. We also added the Rhododendron Pink Lady. The Rhododendron would not bloom at all for the first few years, so I moved it a different location and then it began to bloom. I put in a house plant, I had which was a philodendron, that took to the garden and became very large. I also had house plants because I was taking a class in house plants at City College in San Francisco, so I added two asparagus ferns to the front landscaping. These plants are very large today. We wanted to have a Gingko Tree, but we had a huge ugly pampas grass. We took out the pampas grass and put a gingko in its place. Over all the garden still was not very nice, and I did not have a digital camera, and I disliked spending money for developing photos. When Brooks Camera moved out of Stonestown, I took my photo to one of those little copy mat places and all the photos were ruined. So I quit photography. There are almost no photos of my early garden, expect for one I took of two cats.
After I got my digital camera in December 2001, I was better able to keep records of my garden. In 2003, I became to keep a file of my computer in which I listed what I planted in my garden and made notes. I had already started composting and improving my soil. Before I began composting, I just bought large bags of Supersoil, which was owned by Rod McLellan who had an Orchid Green House and Nursery in South San Francisco. My grandmother always loved Supersoil. But, Supersoil has been bought by Scotts and is no longer made with superior ingredients. I started compost with rectangular Rubbermaid Bins, but then I discovered Earth Machines with were much better. I continued to improve the soil each time I would plant a new plant and add compost as a mulch to the soil of existing plants. I added and removed many plants over the years, and I learned a lot about which plants would do well in San Francisco.
In 2004, I grew ablutions and begonias. I got my begonias from Antonelli Brothers Begonia Nursery in Santa Cruz. The Begonia Nursery has since moved to Watsonville. I planted my orange Rhododendron 'Cristo Rey' which I got at Golden Nursery in San Mateo. It did great until the cold spell of December 7, 2009 killed it. I also planted Impatiens - African, Blondie from Wayside Gardens. They did well for one season. I was also trying to grow roses, but they did not work out, because they got a lot of fungal disease. I found some lily of the valley at Wal-Mart that were sprouting in the bag. I took them home and planted them. This was the first time I was successful with lily of the valley. I was still growing lots of hostas. I tried to types of exotic ivies called Buttercup and Calico. I planted an Endless Summer Hydrangea from Capital Nursery in Sacramento.
In 2009, I removed lawn, because I was tried of all the poa annua weedy grass and the soil underneath the lawn was hard and dry. It needed to be amended with organic matter. I replaced the lawn with wood mulch that I found for free on Craig's List. I added planter boxes for vegetable gardening. On Dec. 7, we had a cold spell, that killed off many of my more tropical plants. It was a very cold winter and then it was followed by heavy rains called El Nino.
In 2010, I added a wooden picnic table to make the garden more complete. In January, I planted a Dwarf Meyer Lemon Tree from Central Garden Center in San Mateo and a Dwarf Thunderhead Black Pine tree from Regan Nursery in Fremont.
Summer 2010 after Landscaping Photo taken with digital camera
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