And just like that, we have finished this leg of our garden journey! As some of us bid farewell to the Zen Garden today, we wanted to acknowledge the efforts of all the folks who chipped in to help make this garden a success. Thanks to P, our all-round engineer and star rock-lifter on the…
We had an enthusiastic crew out this morning to wrap up the final leg of the path and finish leftover planting. D worked on planting the remaining plants – compact Cypress, Pieris’ – Katsura by the new Cypress and Mountain Fire by the terrace, next to the bamboo trees. We debated whether the tag for…
The crew had their work cut out for them this Saturday, and the supervisor, ie D, was cracking the whip! P went to work on his process of laying out the slate stones on gravel and mixing in the dirt with intermittent help from Y and D. Y focused on watering the plants, and then…
It was a rather short garden work day for us on Friday. P, D and Y were outside this hot day, trying to wrap up some of the long overdue tasks. P and D focused on prepping the upper path and Bridge landing. They glued the top layer of the boundary rocks onto the base…
It was another hot, summer day out here in West Kelowna. P and Y were out to start taking out the existing middle step of the patio stairs along the garden path. They pulled out the rectangular top stones easily enough, as well as the supporting blocks. However, they quickly came across a critical decision…
The day began with a skeleton crew composed of D and P for the morning shift. They worked on digging out the upper landing of the Bridge and the path to complete our loop on the West side of the garden, next to the patio. The morning shift ended early as some of us had…
Tuesday morning dawned bright and quite warm again. D and P2 were out around 8 am, setting up some more irrigation routes and digging holes for our new trees. P worked on firming up the stones along the newly laid path. Y watered the plants and worked with D and P2 to plant and mulch…
Monday was a shorter day for the crew. In the morning shift, P worked on extending the path up to the bridge landing using a different process than the previous one by one stone placement. Here, D and P poured sand over a stretch of the path and placed rocks over them. P balanced them…
Sunday morning was hot and we could feel it. We started around 9 and did quite a lot out in the garden. D and P began by checking the stairs by the bridge – they were well cooked and ready to go. Y watered the plants and planted the last round of Bog Filter marginals,…
The weekend crew faced another hot day in the morning and began the morning shift around 8:30 am. P and D began their work on solidifying the bottom steps. Y watered the very thirsty plants, and then joined D and P as they finalized the steps. They’d decided to use glue instead of simply relying…
The crew was greeted by a really warm Friday morning! But, they had things to do and places to be, so they cracked on. P picked up yesterday’s stair building. P2 and D continued to clear out more of the dead tree remains and roots, as well as dug a slightly larger hole above the…
Thursday morning turned out to be cooler than the prior week and we could see the clouds building up early. The crew started work around 8:30 am this day with their focus on the upper bridge landing and the lower embankment where they’d left off work yesterday. D and P2 started by building up what…
The regular crew went to work with definite goals in mind: extend the upper landing and celebrate Canada Day by planting our showcase Japanese Maple tree now that our bridge was in place. We had help from K of course since he would be here for another half a day before heading out again. We…
Tuesday greeted us with the anticipatory waves of the incoming bridge. P was out and shoveling away the packed dirt in the East end of the bridge foundation first thing. P2 continued his work to hack away all the remaining brush and roots around our Weeping Cherry area. Y started the day with a watering…
Monday morning began all clear but still. The crew was out for the morning shift, busy with different tasks. P prepped the sifted dirt and spread it over the recently laid patches 3 and 4 of the path. Y went about watering the plants. P2 was busy with pruning the area near the top of…
The crew had a late start as almost a month’s work caught up to them. Some of us struggled to get out of bed, but we got out in the garden! Y started the day by watering the new plants and the plants in waiting. D and P discussed how to best lift up the…
The weekend started out cool and slightly cloudy following the showers the prior evening. We saw P out and early continuing his work on the path. P enlisted Y in helping him select and lay out the stones for today’s segment of the path. Meanwhile, since learning from K about the imminent arrival of our…
The crew awoke to a cooler day in the morning. It would rain at some point in the day, our weather forecast read. Starting around 8 am, P2 worked on readjusting all the path steps now that we had lowered the level of the path in the North. P started down on the East end…
The team was ready and going early yet again – this time to speed up planting and other activities before the showers arrived for some days potentially starting Friday. P2 continued his pruning around the big ash tree. P continued to meticulously place the tumbled slate rocks over the North path one at a time,…
The crew was up and about early on this hot day. P2 went about pruning all the pokey and prickly greens by the big, old ash tree. P continued to work on adjusting the height of the path by the North end of the garden. While he put Y to work on digging up the…
The morning was a warm one, but our crew was out and busy at 8 am. P2’s task this morning was to clear out all the leftover grass in the Western side of the garden, beside the patio. P and Y continued to dig out the path over in the North. There were multiple planning…
The crew started the week with some different tasks than we have previously, now that our main water features were complete. P picked up where he left off the landing step by the patio and the upper pond. P2 had the responsibility to change the orientation of our gate where our garden path would begin…
We began the day by checking if the rock substitution and more foam had fixed our waterfall. It had indeed, and just in time for Father’s Day – we were chuffed! Next, the group had a planning session to discuss where the next few expansions would take place. D and P plan to have an…
It’s hard to believe we have begun week 4 of this project. Predictably, we got a lot done today, this being a weekend and all. Some of us were up and working before 7 given it was too warm to sleep. Y got a jump start on the herbarium style plant registry app for the…
Friday was a truncated day for garden progress as everyone was busy with miscellaneous errands or their day job. P spent some time in the morning to glue down the folds at the stream mouth underneath which we had poured gravel the prior evening. He also replaced the liner and under-lay back over the stream…
The crew had a short day today. In the morning, P and Y worked on adjusting the level of the gravel underneath the entrance of the stream higher. P2 continued adding a few more large flat rocks on the side of the waterfall stack, and along the future garden path. He had to remove an…
Wednesday morning greeted us with some more warm weather, though the high in the day was expected to be just 22 degrees C. The crew met outside at 8 am again. After an initial discussion on what adjustments were needed to the patio steps, most of the crew went on to their own separate tasks….
The crew was up and going around 8 am on this sunny but windy morning. We had rock piles to finish and water flow to contour. We had to make sure that all our layered waterfall rocks that had taken so much effort to balance on our rock stacks actually got the water flow as…
Monday morning began with the crew somewhat dispersed. P and Y took care of some errands and did not get to the garden project until about after lunch. D and P2, however, were busy right from the get go. First, they went to Bylands to pick up our new trees that were awaiting a pick…
We started our Sunday morning early since it was going to be another hot day. We planned to finish up the lower pond area. We cut out the liner around the skimmer and began to trim back both the under-lay and liner around the lower pond area. We made a few more trips down to…
The day greeted us in a true Kelowna summer fashion with a warm morning that got progressively warmer by the minute! D, P and Y decided to work on the lower pond waterfall and wrap up the rock frame that would channel the stream over the spill rocks. We also needed to tape down some…
As is often the case following a big work day, we had a slower morning. Given K was planning to go back home, the group focused their time on getting the materials that K would take home to build the bridge with T’s help. K, and P discussed the finer details of how we wanted…
The work day began with D looking for the skimmer/pump manual in a frenzy. Our experts just wanted to consult the official instructions. Meanwhile, over by the upper pond, P contemplated the meaning of life, and whether it’s better to lower the level of the spillway so that we need to hide less of the…
It was another crisp summer morning here at West Kelowna, but that didn’t stop our crew from getting started on the task they had been looking forward to for days – getting the pond liners in! Before we started with the liners and under lays, we wanted to solidify how the upper pond’s waterfall rocks…
The morning began with rain and chilly weather. P and Y deemed it a rest day. We were planning to take a rest day for our blog until we heard grumbling from some of the crew members (namely D and K), so we were compelled to put out a brief note. While P labored on…
Our crew got to work around 7:30-8 after battling some Monday morning blues. The main event of the day was set to be getting and installing pond liners on both our ponds and stacking all kinds of rocks around them. While the Kelowna specialty store opened at 7, we gave them an hour to settle…
The builders were greeted in the morning by some chilly weather. Whatever happened to the famous Kelowna summer? Nonetheless, our builders marched on, led this breezy day by K, who was at the site, all decked up in his toolbelt and paraphernalia at 7, while the rest of us struggled out of our beds to…
It was the start of the weekend and we planned to get a lot done the next couple days. We started around 9 am by capturing the measurements to assess whether our pump could handle the waterfalls we were envisioning in our two ponds, and whether the pipe we had bought would fit the trench…
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been building this garden for a week now! P2 wasn’t going to join us today, so it was just D, P and Y. We got an even later start around 8:45. Unbeknownst to Y, D and P had discussed a change in the plans around the lower pool where…
The day started a little later at 8 am today. The crew kicked off with their usual stand-up. Given P had a lot of meetings and could spend less than an hour this morning, we decided to focus on finishing up the grass removal as well as lowering the step down from the patio to…
We awoke to a beautiful day with some visitors showing up bright and early outside our kitchen window and hanging around for a couple hours underneath the shady canopy. The day’s work began with a stand-up to discuss the lower pond and how to shape it now that it was more circular thanks to erosion…
We had another early 7 am start. Though even so early on, the day looked like it would be a hot one. We started the day with another stand up session, this time focused on fine-tuning the upper pond, which looked like it was almost there, though needed some more leveling of the rock shelf…
We had P2 join us for a 7 am start today. With four builders on the ground, we planned to tackle both the ponds as well as the walking path. The air had a slight chill to it and the sky was mostly overcast, which suited us just fine for the digging operations. As P2…
Fuelled by rhubarb and strawberry muffins courtesy of mama E, we kicked off Day 2 early on a bright Sunday morning at 7:30! P and D started by digging out the cherry tree stump and surrounding roots from in the lower pond area. Then we started digging the outlines of the upper and lower pond,…
We began our first full day at Bosky Acre with a full tour of the property by taking in the earthy aroma of the herbs in the outdoor patio, dreaming up the tastes of all the delicious fruits that the newly planted fruit trees will bear and feasting on the heady scent of the brilliantly…