The Sand in My Bed

I broke a couple little bones in my foot this spring, which prevented me from doing much of anything in the way of breaking and preparing new ground for flowerbeds. In early summer, I was wholly preoccupied with planting my vegetable garden. By late summer, the foot had healed completely, but my energy for gardening had entirely run out, as it does every year about that time. Early fall was taken up with marathons of harvesting and canning and freezing.

So I've only in the last few weeks turned my attention back to flowerbeds, only to discover that much of my prime area for perennial beds on the south side of the house is builder's sand! It looks as if at some point in the past, to accommodate either the coming of the municipal water line or a new septic system or both, what must once have been a steep slope between the house and the drive was filled in and built up to a level surface extending maybe 30 or 40 feet with builder's sand.

There's good loam a few feet wide extending along part of the side of the house, but everything else is sand covered by thick grass turf. This is wonderful irony, since most of the rest of the property has clay soil to one degree or another.

So I'm trying several different things to see what might work. In one place, I've dug out some of the sand and mixed in a large amount of fluffy composted manure and odds and ends of potting soil and planted a few standard garden perennials. In a couple others, I've transplanted a variety of strong weedy wildflowers dug up from roadsides-- NE asters, goldenrod, chickory, butter-and-eggs, etc. -- without amending the sand at all. I've also put in a few clumps from the giant bed of those ubiquitous semi-wild orange daylilies in the front of the house to sink or swim, and a clump of ornamental grass just arrived by mail order.

I was hoping to put in a few small shrubs around the edges of this sort of platform at the side of the house as a windbreak, and even a small ornamental-type tree in the middle for a bit of noontime shade in summer, but I think unless I get somebody to come and replace rather a large amount of the sand with topsoil, that won't be possible.

Drat!