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Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 19.49 - Rebuild or Replace? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-09  

Welcome, Fellow Gardeners! December is here, so is snow in some parts of the country. And after the Holidays, many gardeners spend the next few months of bleak weather curled up with garden porn, poring over plant offerings (what lovely leaves!…to touch such silken stems!...ooh, those exquisite blooms!) for ideas of beauty to plant the following Spring. Here in NW PA, I may have a garden nightmare to look forward to next year.

You may recall my mention a few months ago of the water line hookup replacement project being undertaken by our municipal water company (with a few million in infrastructure funds from the Feds — thanks, President Biden!) This is what phase 1 looked like, when they first located the underground water main’s hookup site for each house on the street.

You can see my circle garden and the tops of my rhododendron and iris beside the steps.

Phase 2 is replacing the old cast iron pipes going into one’s house from the new PVC hookups created in phase 1. Participation would be entirely up to the homeowner and at no cost to them — because again, those infrastructure funds — or one could decide to keep their old pipes (and thereby save their lawns and houses from the disruption of water line replacement), with the caveat that if/when the cast iron pipes ultimately fail later, replacing them and repairing damage to lawns and houses would be all at the homeowner’s own expense.

What it looked like late this past summer in the Circle Garden. In spring there are Irises and crocus and a daylily or two. And a bunch of weeds, to be honest, that tend to get away from me.

This is the section where the rhododendron garden (bricks to the right) and iris bed (sprouting at left) meet — and where I suspect the new pipes will be going in.

They might have to dig out my Vinca bed on the other side of the front steps, if I’m off on which side of the house the intake pipes are located.

Of course we’re opting IN — that’s a Budget Bill that Hubby Across-the-Aisle already passed.

But the downside will come next spring, when I may lose the Front Yard circle garden, which sits atop the area where I think our intake pipes go underground into the house. They may also lay waste, at least in part, to the rhododendron and iris beds in front. Hubby Across-the-Aisle claims the representative from the plumbing contractors told him that they would “try to shimmy the pipe underground” (through the current cast iron piping, presumably) “to the new mainline hookup, but if they couldn’t do that then they would have to bring in the digging equipment”….and probably tear up the front lawn, and possibly our cement walkway, depending on what part of the yard the pipe gets stuck in. And therein lies my dilemma.

The contractors will, of course, do whatever remediation is needed — repair the concrete floor in the basement — which definitely needs to be torn up at the point where the water line runs into the house, so the new line can be installed — return or replace front lawn soil and (I suppose) re-seed grass, etc. ...if that’s what the homeowner prefers. I know they WON’T be doing the grunt work of rebuilding a circle garden….that would all be on Hubby and me. (And I’m no Spring Chicken anymore.) Nor would they likely be doing the grunt work of removing and saving the garden wall bricks, if they need to dig through the circle garden or the iris bed (or somewhere else...), and here again I’m not sure how much time I’d be given to do that chore (a week? a day? an hour or two?)

If the garden(s) must be dismantled, I’m not sure how many front yard plants I’ll be able to save for replanting. Since they’ll be doing this work all over surrounding neighborhoods beginning next spring and summer, I’ll only have a week or two’s advance notice of when the Executive Mansion is next on the schedule.

Would you suggest I try to save any plants in the worst case scenario, as well as the cement blocks currently outlining those Front Yard gardens? (I have mostly Purple Coneflower, Iris, Daylily and some odd bulbs in the circle garden. And of course, Vinca in the Vinca garden.) Or should I just let matters take their course and start over from scratch with new plantings, as needed? What would you do, were this happening for you?

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