Chris’s HOME garden in Wisconsin

betimes this spring , Chris Neumann share a bunch of photos of the horticulture he does at employment ( refresh your memoryHERE . ) Today we get to see what he ’s up to at dwelling !

He says,“My wife , Pam , and I live in Madison , Wisconsin , in a house built on a standard metropolis raft measuring about a tenth of an acre . The house and garage take up much of the pile but it ’s on a quoin so we have a terrace on two side , giving us a little more room to garden .

Our gardening style might easily be account as eclectic . On one hand we have a mini - savanna , micro - woods , nano - mesic - prairie , and pico - grit - prairie all model after and planted to flora of native Wisconsin works community . On the other hand , we have a rock garden , spook garden , and other beds and planters with annual , perennial , and tropicals from all over the world .

We ’ve been here 18 years now and in that metre we ’ve claim out two trees and much lawn and planted six unexampled trees and many perennials . Gone is the Colorado spicy spruce which was jeopardize both the house and passersby and no more is the indisposed plum , fate by a former owner who built a raised bed around the tree , burying its beginning and base . We put in two Juneberry , a pagoda cornel , two redbuds , and a bur oak . The bur oak was a one - understructure - tall seedling when constitute and now , 16 years after , it is 35 human foot marvelous .

A word about what Madisonians call the ‘ terrace ’ . This is the area between the sidewalk and the street . In Chicago , we called it the ‘ parkway ’ . I have it off many gardener use the full term ‘ hellstrip ’ . Ours is rather encompassing and the soil not too big , so I just call it the heckstrip . We ’ve made the heckstrip out front over into perennial beds . We ’d only catch around to redo about a third of the side strip so I figured it would be a good place to put our tropicals . This would liberate up our small terrace , which we had originally build to hold two chairs and a bistro board , but it immediately satisfy up with potted plants .

A couple of my photos show the process of converting the heckstrip from lawn to tropic garden . In the trichotomy of right fashion , wrong fashion , and crazy way to do something , this unquestionably pass in the gaga way . Unfortunately , in addition to our overwintered canna and elephant ears , I decided to add three banana trees and three new sort of elephant ear to this bed . Thus we had enough plant life leftover that there was still no room to sit on the terrace . mayhap next twelvemonth . ”

Ha ! The heckstrip . So funny ! ! Chris , your garden is awing – beautiful , fun , and a laboratory for experiment . It ’s all - around great ! !

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Looking from the heckstrip garden to the front of the house. Calamint (loved by pollinators), ‘Pamina’ Japanese anemone, etc.

2024-11-22: Cut hole in sod, flip over around hole, add a boatload of compost to soil below, plant banana or elephant ear. Repeat. In the background, Pam is moving plants from her white garden as the city will be removing the ash (destroying everything else around it) and replacing it with a tree not susceptible to the emerald ash borer.

2025-03-27: Finished digging all holes, flipping the sod, adding compost, planting plants and rhizomes, edging the sidewalk and then bevelling the bed edges and using the flipped sod from that to fill the space between the holes. Now we will add 4 inches of leaf mulch and it will be ready to go.

2025-03-27: Happy jungle in a Madison heckstrip. I’ve had more people stop and ask about this garden than anything else we’ve done. One guy made his girlfriend stop and back up the car so he could get a better look. Five varieties of elephant ear, ‘Gran Nain’ bananas, ‘Red King Humbert’ canna, and ‘Margarita’ sweet potato.

A few of the containers on our patio. ‘Smallwoods Driveway’ coleus, ‘Gryphon’ begonia, golden pineapple sage, ‘Keystone Kopper’ coleus, ‘Mojito’ elephant ear.