Our buddy James in Amarillo, from the first 'Our Friends Gardens' series is at work on a new piece of garden. ...
Here's the 'before'

Hey James, I have a piece in my garden that is looking a whole lot like that right now. Must remember to get a pic of it for the b & a thread too.

Looking forward to seeing your new border when its all painted with plants.
As always,
Thanks for sharing with us. xoxoxo

James has send us an update on the above bed extension.



He tells me . . . .

"Here is the flowerbed extension during the planting time.

I had extended the retaining wall stones using the wrong color stones, so I ripped them all out and replaced them with the correct color.

The plants are a hodge-podge mix at this time. We have already moved several around trying to get them like we want. We also planted 4 tomato plants which won't be continued after this year.

While taking plants away from the old pond which I am removing, I divided 6 bunches of monkey grass and wound up with 102 plants which are planted just inside the retaining wall stones.

The Scotch moss which was near the pond divided into 42 plants which I put temporarily into one of Clara's beds. Should have lots of it to plant along the new ponds.

We finally got rain here. We had showers 4 evenings and nights for a total of about 2.5 inches. None of it ran off."

Great minds think alike ... because I had been wishing my little fat greek bed had been ready in time to set some tomatoes in it,,, to use the sunny space productively until more perennials were added in the fall. Maybe I should add a melon plant for fun, and to green-cover the bare mulch.

I think you are brave to go to the effort of changing out the pavers to get the right color. The monkey grass will soften it nicely.

We have been getting some much needed rain lately too. Before that, it had also been an awfully dry spring down here. And, like your earlier consecutive rainy nights, there is rain in our Metroplex forecast for the next 5 nights, hopefully not violent ones tho.

I know it must have been satisfying to see the bed engineering prove successful during repeated rainfall. It is so important to get that right. I am still struggling with the installation of a French drain in the new fence bed. Am so anxious to get it finished and planted - as I am sure the poor potted plants that are waiting to be planted there are too. Everytime I water them, I can almost hear them gasping for more root space.

What shrub have you used as the focal point in the corner James?

Is that a hand plow, scythe or sickle against the fence? If so, the bed would be a lovely site for an extended farm implement collection. I had been keeping lovely old rusty things in the herb beds - things we had picked up on friends and families land over the years. I think there is something so endearing about derelict tools and vintage machine parts.

Am looking forward to seeing your new enlarged pond area too. I admire you for getting so much done during summer weather !

Dear forum friend, James Slay has sent us an update on his ongoing garden pond project.
See, see, we just keep on going,, the more our gardens give us, the more we want to do in them, constantly making our havens bigger and ever better.


Jame writes,
“Here is where the old pond was. The retaining wall was torn out and re-installed in a larger outline. The edge of the new lower pond will be along the wall. The upper pond will have a waterfall into it and then feed into the lower pond with another waterfall.

The ponds will be dug to shape and lined with 45 mil EPDM flexible rubber liner.

I finished installing the last of 5 duplex electrical outlet boxes today and then pulled the wiring to them late this evening.

We have our 2 youngest grandsons staying for 2 weeks and helping work on the pond area.”

James, the waterfall sounds fabulous. I’m afraid I have make do with the sound of gutter falls when it rains. But hey, I love that too.
I’ve been looking into my dream pond more this year. Think I have found someone who understands exactly what I envision,,, so maybe it will happen one of these years.

I hope those grandsons have reached the age of brawn, to do some serious helping. If not, little and cute goes a looong way with helping grandparents.

James has worked his way up to the top pond now. Man, what an undertaking! He is amazing - chucking rock, cement and heavy equipment around like this.

Its going to be stunning James

Are you sure he's not putting in a hot tub? Or swimming pool? Will there be fish - they'll love all the room! Lots of hard work being accomplished.

There's just no stopping a passionate engineer!
More of his pics and fascinating schemes to come...

And from the other end:

He went from that to this

in one day.

James tells me:

"The waterfall filter has a 21 inch wide spout for an outlet. The outlet water from the filter will spill into a small pool at the top of the upper waterfall and then cascade down the round river rock and then spill into the pond. The rock will be formed around and over the outlet spout and will mostly hide it from view. Then I will build a short section of fence to enclose the filter and hide it. There will be a gate to get inside the filter area.

There are actually going to be 2 filters inside that area. The water will flow through a homemade 55 gallon plastic drum biological filter which will act as a trash catcher to keep the waterfall filter from having to contain all the trash. The outlet of that homemade filter will flow into the waterfall filter. There will be drains on each of the filters to flush the trash out and onto flower beds. Fish waste is good fertilizer.

Also each of the waterfalls has pipes underneath which will allow the water to be bypassed and dump directly into the ponds without flowing down the waterfalls. Late in the fall I will allow the water to flow through the bypasses so that the water won’t be supercooled by flowing over the waterfalls. The pump will circulate the water through the filters 365 days per year. The only time the pump will be off is when some of the filter cleaning operation is being done and when I change to a smaller pump for winter operation."

~~~
now there's some engineering for ya!,, m

James has continued to work on his new pond, right thru the summer heat - Texas sized heat at that.
And here's its trial run = running great

This is the upper waterfall

And heres the lower waterfall

Now thats a Texas sized pond

Since then, he surround the big black filter unit with a fence,

accessed by a finely crafted gate.

Look at the detailing that went into making that last board fit right up to the stones. .. proving once again that ...
If you want something done right...
Great job James!

the last pic fell off...
Heres the gate