Garden Reports and Rejoicing – May 17
My dog loves to lay in cool, moist dirt. He’ll go into a shady spot and dig into the ground to expose the fresh, damp soil and happily lay down there…no matter what plants I’ve carefully placed and tended in that area. He’s such a dog!
One spot he loves is in the corner by the kitchen door, behind a Sky Pencil Japanese holly. Never mind that there are hellebores growing there, or that the Ilex roots get torn up as he searches for more damp soil. Over the past three years we’ve tried putting stakes and overturned flower pots in the area to discourage this swine-like preference for moist mud. This works well enough but this garden bed ends up looking trashy. Time to rethink and create, I decided.
I have a nice collection of old watering cans, picked up over the years at rummage sales, so I decided to use these to create dog-proof barriers. Today I post the finished look, and tomorrow I’ll put up a series of how-to pictures. For tonight, however, I leave you with the thought that a challenge can often be seen as a huge opportunity.
Watering can dog barriers with shade-loving moss inserts.
