Labyrinth Garden

I know that I have not written about my wild suburbia home garden in a long time. This is not because nothing is happening; to the contrary, the last piece of lawn has met its end! The small bit of turf grass – woefully out of place – on the east side of the front yard is no more. I have been watering the deodar tree deeply but infrequently, allowing the lawn to dry out between periods of irrigation. I then gave this struggling patch of St. Augustine grass a close crop using my weed wacker, and covered it with four inches of oak leaves. It will make a valient attempt to grow back, but I won’t let it. No cardboard, no digging. Will keep you informed on my progress. Instead, I’d like to describe the construction of a labyrinth garden in the South Pasadena nature park.

Nature Park Volunteers

Community volunteers and those from Bank of America’s My Environment® employee program have made a huge difference to the park. We have removed weeds, spread mulch, lined paths with rocks,  planted native plants, and watered the new plantings to help them get established.

Last June there was a fire in the nature park. When I first saw the burned area I was confused because if I had wanted a “controlled burn” to rid the park of some weeds, it would have looked exactly like this. No, it was not me! A fire burned annual weedy grasses on a slope, moving down toward the Arroyo Seco flood control channel. The fire charred the flammable grasses and the leaves of a few trees, but most of the plants we put in were unharmed.

The bare, blackened ground called out to us: this is an opportunity, do something good. One of our park stewards suggested a labyrinth garden, and instantly we all knew that this was a great idea. We had a relatively flat piece of land, a pile of rocks, and some strong volunteers.

Labyrinth Gardens

Before starting our own, we looked for other nearby labyrinth gardens and found two. One is located in Arlington Garden in Pasdena. The other labyrinth can be found along the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena.

 

A Plan

We decided our labyrinth needed to be simple. We had an area of approximately 20 feet by 20 feet, just enough for a simple spiral. Searching pinterest I found just the plan.

Volunteers executed the design in one morning. All it took was a plan, a pile of rocks, a length of rope, a tape measure and some good people with both muscles and good spatial ability. If you haven’t walked it yet, get down there immediately!! You will enter the spiral tense from all of the holiday traffic and activity, and emerge relaxed and refreshed.

 

Constructing the Labyrinth