Here’s a project that we had the pleasure of working on this spring with S&L Contracting.
This client wanted to reduce disturbance and maintain the charm of their mature garden. With limited access the work was done 99% by hand (minus a couple of muck trucks). Their request for an eclectic mix of natural materials and reusing existing materials when possible was music to my ears.
Really happy with how this one turned out, and thanks @freeman.fabrication for the corten details!
It’s so rewarding to work alongside tradespeople that are passionate about helping a clients vision come to fruition, and to have clients that trust us to create a beautiful space for them. This project was one of those jobs where everyone was on the same page and thrilled with the end results.
Looking forward to the projects we have lined up this summer and fall, as well as continuing to maintain the beautiful gardens we have the privilege of working in.
We were feeling all the spring feels today. Just beautiful working in a mature garden, mulching the gardens with leaf mold from on site. And ended the day hanging out with the new Dockerty Gardens team additions.
Our social media has been in hibernation but we definitely haven’t been. We’ve taken advantage of this warm winter weather by getting a head start on our fruit tree pruning, which is great spring is around the corner. I personally love fruit tree pruning, spending some times hanging out in trees, and the opportunity to maintain orchards for the next generation of cider, pie and sauce makers.
Next week is our last week of fruit tree pruning and then we’ll be switching our attention to continuing spring installs, planting, pruning and getting ahead of (or catching up on) weeding.
Here is Taylor pruning some apple trees on one of the many special properties we get to visit this time of year.
Nothing like gardening to help you really savour the seasons. Soon enough the leaves will have finished falling but for now we are just loving the autumn colour.
The fall gardening season is in full swing and my awesome crew deserves a shoutout. They are a blast to work with and the hardest working people I know.
Pictured is myself, Sierra and Taylor. They are game for anything I throw at them, including planting these 1500 lb magnolias with the help of @soloslifting .
Not pictured is Walker (who I half-jokingly call the head of our tree/hedge/lawn division) and Dorothea (who has been a dedicated and loyal part Dockerty Gardens from the very beginning).
Was at our Oak Bay site today and took some time to enjoy the gardens we’ve installed there. Looking forward to the next phase of hardscaping and landscaping at this project.
What a week! Looking forward to all the fun projects we have in June.
1 - Home base: grape arbour and wildflower lawn
2 - Trimming boxwoods and pulling weeds on a sunny day
3 - Planting a low-maintenance garden of Spirea, juniper, Potentilla, Pennisetum, Panicum, Teucrium and Sedum
4 - A gorgeous veggie garden at a clients house
5 - Dirt rainbow with backup from my main man
What a spring it has been so far! Here’s what we got up to last week:
I had the pleasure of ending the week off at a clients house that we figured out I’ve been gardening at since 2016. We were talking about all the changes we’ve made to her gardens over the years and what a joy it’s been. A big change we’ve made has been increasing the amount of spring bulbs which were looking especially beautiful on Friday.
Another longterm client had some beautiful new raised beds installed in her vegetable garden by @eatonwoodwork , replacing the old ones that were rotten.
And we continued to install the landscaping and gardens at a project we are working on in Oak Bay. Seeding meadows is always a long game but it’s nice to see some great germination (even if from afar to the non-plant-inclined person it looks “weedy”) and we’re looking forward to seeing plants bulk up and fill in the meadow. Also added some Garry oak trees, Arbutus and a dogwood. Planting trees is always a pleasure.
We are looking forward to the rest of a jam-packed spring including installing an orchard, hanging out with plant nerds when we’ll have a table at the Cowichan Valley Rhododendron Society plant sale on May 3rd, and continuing to maintain and install gardens.
Things are bursting with growth at Dockerty Gardens home base. We have always been plant obsessed and that will not be changing anytime soon.
Mukdenia rossii
Iris bucharica
Erythronium (species unknown as it was gifted by a client - definitely a hybrid)
For gardeners spring has arrived! Dormant pruning is done for the season and we welcome all the new growth.
Fritillaria raddeana is absolutely a plant we want to put into more people’s gardens. It doesn’t come cheap but it is deer and rabbit resistant and requires NO water other than what comes from the sky. And it flowers reliably in mid March!
If you are looking for garden maintenance, design or install and are interested in gardens that are plant-centric, beautiful and drought tolerant we would love to hear from you. Life is too short to have a boring garden and we can certainly help you to think outside the box.
We have been enjoying the slow start to the season. We made the most of the January sunshine for fruit tree pruning, so this snow is a great time to do some behind-the-scenes work. And being gardeners, you can bet that once the snow melts we’ll be getting back to our winter projects and starting our spring installs.
We will also be cutting back grasses and perennials to ready them for another growing season. We like to do this in February or March if we need to prepare gardens for mulch or make way for the shoots of spring bulbs.
This photo was taken a couple of days prior to snow beginning to fall in Cowichan Valley.
This is what one of our clients yards looked like AFTER a fall cleanup last week. This is their second winter with this young and establishing landscape and we encouraged them to let things be so they can get a feel of what their garden would be like over winter if the “cut-back” was delayed till spring.
Perennials and grasses that get soggy and sloppy were cut down but anything with strong stems, seed-heads, or architectural interest we left as is. This client already said he already has been enjoying seeing the increased bird activity in the garden this fall.
