Set in stone.

Most of our garden is planted with edible plants. But when we planned it out on paper we also wanted to include a lot of flowers. Some of them are herbs with culinary and medicinal purposes and some are magnets for bees and butterflies. We wanted to arrange our flowering plants in a pretty way and also wanted a flat area for friends, kids and relatives to pitch a tent when visiting. We do not like square shapes, straight paths and formal gardens very much. Because of this we choose a design based on circles. Circles have been used for thousands of years in cultures all over the world. We like ancient stone circles very much and decided early on to have a large circle in the centre of our garden and add four standing stones, one for each point of the compass. The first job was to get rid of the stones in the ground in order to have a smooth area for pitching tents and have a bit of a lawn as the rest of the garden is more on the wild side.  We did not know just how many stones there were in our 9 meters across circle. We built crescent moon shaped raised beds all around the circle and still ended up with huge piles of stones for other projects. We then had to hire a rotivator to get the area somewhat flat and ready for seeding. All those preparations were done last year. This past weekend we had beautiful weather and decided it was time to put our standing stones in place and start making an edge in natural stone to make the circle easier to mow with our push mower and have less weeds growing into the raised beds. The stones needed to be moved from another part of the garden and we made a sledge for this purpose. We then used the ancient method of rollers to move the standing stones across the garden. It was fun and quite easy.

 

We dug holes and planted the stones firmly in place at the cardinal points. We dug out a shallow ditch all around the circle and filled it with gravel. Then it was time to mix up some cement and put down the small flagstones for the mowing strip. At each standing stone we added a few more stones.

East is connected to the element of air and the colour yellow so in this section we planted a Japanese maple with yellow leaves and a lot of grasses that can move in the wind. South is connected to the element of Fire and the colour red so we have a lot of red flowers here and a lovely Japanese maple with bright red leaves. In the West we added a lot of seashells for the element water and a blue flowering Ceanothus.  We still have to do the North stone decorations which will consist of a lot of crystals for the element of Earth and bright green plants.

East

South

West

Here you can see the view across the circle to the East, South, West and North. We are planning to take the same pictures once a month so you can see how the garden changes in the course of the months and years ahead. All of these posts will be in the category called Elemental circle.