I call them “noodle gardens” because I think they look like wet spaghetti noodles, kinda curvy, only surrounded by rock, not tomato sauce. Because I hate straight lines, I had our neighbor Roy, who delivered the dirt for us, shape the south berm into a curving form from east to west, pushing two sections into the property and leaving one section at the edge of the ditch. These two indentations were the result.
I knew that I wanted to plant trees there, and we planted the red maples in 2005, so far so good. But following that, I’ve been trying to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of the space.
I put down fabric and edged it with black granite, filled it with 1″ black granite, and then made a noodle shaped raised garden bed in the center, to be planted with bulbs. My thinking was two fold: 1) it’s one less expanse that I have to weed or spray, and 2) it continues the use of rock from the front around the sides.
First spring for the noodle garden – the daffodils are up and some of the early spring bulbs are popping out of the ground in the noodle garden! Yea!