Italian Dreaming on a Wet, Northwest Day

Italian Dreaming on a Wet, Northwest Day

Posted by Heather Harris

I have a problem. Its origin is a term abroad in Italy when I was the very romantic age of 20. One should never taste their first glass of wine under a jasmine covered pergola on a warm evening at a 500 year old Tuscan farm with fire flies and a locally sourced five course meal.It really does a number on your head. Your expectations for life blow way out of proportion. And you can't get the warm, reddish glow of the sun setting on the rosy stone and gravel paths out of your head.

And thus begins my problem. My dream garden design is a  Mediterranean, warm, drought tolerant, geometrically precise, gravel strewn masterpiece. Something like this:

My reality is a Northwest, damp, water-logged, chaotic, grass choked field.  A yard much more likely to yield a garden like this:

It's lovely and all, but I'm not sipping wine on that bench. I'm drinking a hot coffee, bundled up in four layers with an outer rain parka.  

So, I have started my experiment of creating a Northwest Mediterranean garden on a small scale with the vegetable garden. Of course, there are five redwoods at the southern end (yes, someone planted five of the fasted growing, largest trees in the world in my yard) , but the color of the branches exactly matches the needle thin Italian cypress trees growing all over Tuscany, so they'll do. And alas, there is no rosy pink crushed rock at Portland Sand and Gravel, but they do have every imaginable size in gray, so I will just have to compensate with copious amounts of terracotta pots. Greg laid out a perfectly rectangular plot using Ed Smith's "Magic Triangle" (well really the Egyptians came up with it, but I'll give Ed the credit.) Thank God I have a husband with the patience to measure, because Lord knows I don't. We have the square vegetable beds laid out geometrically, and I left room in the center of the garden for a black, iron bistro set, so that hopefully, I will be sipping wine on a summer evening, surrounded by the bounty of my raised beds, while delighting over a caprese salad made with my own heirloom tomatoes.  I'm thinking a Chianti...

                                                Luke helping shovel all of the dirt.

                                Dirt in, April seeds planted, gravel ready to go in this weekend!