Planning the Depave
Posted by Joanne on 30 Mar 2007 at 03:05 pm | Tagged as: Depaving
Update: Postponed - new date TBA
Last night Sarah and I had an impromptu depave planning meeting in the courtyard. We both took a piece of yellow chalk and drew outlines of walkways and future garden beds on the cement. Our mutual hope is to have enough room to expand the garden beds although enhancing the aesthetics of the patio would be a significant side benefit. My worry is that after the depave day we will have a patio full of holes in no particular order, none of which will be useful for planting rain gardens, lettuce beds or absorbing run-off. Hopefully the formal planning meeting tomorrow will help us prioritize our cement-breaking efforts. In the meantime, the chalk is on the dryer: please feel free to add to Sarah’s and my initial design.
I love this use of the blog, documenting our planning process! Great!
Sam gave me a quick overview of the grid-cutting plan. I forgot to ask about depaving near the building. I know we don’t want to plan rain gardens near the building because of flooding, but don’t we want to plan something near the building with shorter roots anyway? I’m thinking the rain barrels and compost all would like to be sitting in dirt or even turf grass, or shorter-rooted natives. What do yout think?
I think we can use some shorter rooted forbs for the areas closer to the house. This includes cone flowers, asters and clovers(I completely stole the list from Marcus De La Fleur’s bioswale section of his site). Clover would be great plant between pavers elsewhere, too.
We need to have a vote about where the eating area will go. Sam wants it by the tree. Sarah and I are thinking that it will be more practical by John’s door (original location). Laila thinks we can put it anywhere we want. We need Ted, John, Ben and Dan to weigh in.
Hey, you guys let me know if you need some native seeds! Ted knows where to reach me! I would love to see more about the Hub on your site. Are you posting elsewhere?
Thanks! Julie.