Digging In: Prepping for a New Garden

By Jennifer Smith

Soil, again? Yes, let’s talk about soil again. As I shared last month, I want to create a garden in which you will succeed — where it’s easy to weed and water, and you can try your hand at any number of plants, not just those described as “clay busters” in plant catalogs. Therefore, spending time on soil preparation is quite important. Admittedly, few people wake in the morning excited about the day’s scheduled delivery of soil amendments. Ahh, but if you knew how fun gardening can be with well-prepared soil, you would.

There are many ways you can prep a site for a new garden. Layers of cardboard topped with soil and leaves is one way to start a garden. The layers will kill the grass and weeds, break down over time, and offer the gardener a site ready to plant sans the disruption of the original soil. Along those same lines is the use of plastic to kill the lawn and weeds. And finally, one method employs cutting or scalping a lawn until it relents and then planting directly in the old sod. The old sod acts as a natural mulch and minimizes soil erosion when the new garden is planted on a slope. The philosophy behind these methods is that one should not disturb the soil’s structure: the air pockets and the microorganisms living within the soil. But let’s take a wider view of this approach.

If you want a garden now, employing the cardboard method will test your patience, as well as your neighbor’s. It can take upwards of eight weeks, often longer, for this method to work. That’s a long time to look at a bit of a mess when the garden is to be in the front yard. As for the plastic method, I wonder how using plastic to create a garden for nature fits together. I like to think the less I invite plastic into the equation of garden preparation and care the better.

As for the soil’s health that we don’t want to jeopardize, more often than not, the gardens I’m creating for myself or for others, will replace part of a lawn. We’re not gardening in a healthy woodland area or supplementing plants in an establishing prairie. Rather, we’re gardening in compacted, clay-rich soil. Any disturbance to soil once under a lawn will be made up for ten times over with amended soil that allows for improved air and water circulation and benefits from the absence of chemicals. Additionally, the plants we’re adding will attract beneficial insects.

When I begin a new garden, I prefer to remove the sod with a sod cutter, it makes quick work of what can be a labor-intensive task. I then lightly till the base soil. I don’t want to add my soil amendments over a base of hard, compacted soil. The soil amendments are placed in the garden and then tilled to mix with the original soil. The soil is raked and leveled, ensuring it’s smooth and won’t settle into dips and divots to collect water. When it’s time to plant, I prefer to start in the back or the middle of the garden, working my way out, fluffing the soil as I go. The result is well-draining, loose soil that’s ready for new plants above and beneficial organisms below.

Some will bristle at my preferred method of preparing a garden for planting. There are those that say we should avoid pulling weeds for doing so disturbs the soil. But if I can give you a garden that’s easy to plant, where weeds lift with little effort and when watered, the water immediately soaks deep into the soil, rather than pooling or running off the surface, then I’ve created a garden that has set you on a path for success. You have a garden that will inspire you to add more plants, expand gardens, and perhaps one day, forgo the entire lawn for a garden planted with nature.

Jennifer Smith is an award-winning pollinator garden designer with Wimberg Landscaping.