Back Veggie Garden Beds Finished

This weekend, we got up the gumption to move dirt and lift limestone to complete the redesign of the back vegetable garden beds. We've now gone completely from the three rotten wooden raised beds to four small squares of limestone.

I'm extremely satisfied with these. Their form brings some much needed design structure to the back utility area, and the limestone and square grid pattern really plays well with the rest of the garden design.

For now, we're testing out having the Mexican lime tree in the center, but that may change with weather and whimsy.

Truthfully, part of the motivation for redoing these beds (aside from the rotting wood of the old beds) is to reduce the amount of space that we have devoted to growing vegetables. Veggies are just really difficult and time consuming to grow, and though I still delight in having fresh, homegrown veggies, I want to limit their pull on my life.

Now, we have a bed or two for seasonal veggies, one devoted to herbs, and I'd like the last of these to be devoted to flowering perennials, both for using as cut flowers and as a nursery bed to grow seedlings to place in other parts of the garden.

This is also really a step forward in making the garden even more drought proof. Veggies require a lot of water and the old wood beds dried out very quickly. Hopefully, these smaller, lower beds edged by water-retaining stone and planted with more drought tolerant herbs and perennials will lesson our load.