Laying a Gravel Patio for a Secret “Book Nook” Garden

Good morning friends. How's everyone doing today? Well today we're going to be getting started on creating the book nook right in front of the garden library. Now I've had this idea for the book nook since I think last December, but I've kind of moved it around. I was originally going to have it behind the library, but I'm really glad I didn't do that because as I lived in the library and with the library, I discovered that what I really wanted was a living space or basically an outdoor living room right in front of the library. And so what we're going to be doing today is breaking ground on this project and laying some gravel. So I prepped the area and my husband has generously offered to help me put down the gravel. We're going to put down a two inch gravel patio right in front of the garden library. And I think it's worth mentioning, everything's just scattered all over the place right now. That as you see me work on this new book nook, it's going to take me a long time to get it to the point that you saw in the drawing, mainly because I do still need to use this area for cut flowers and vegetables until we hit the first frost. So the way I'm choosing to work on this area is if I can start to renovate part of it without doing any destruction to my cut flowers, then I'm going to work on that area and then move on from there. But you can see I've cleared the raised beds right in front of the library. I put those back behind it and to the left side, I dug down three inches. You can probably see that there. And these stones we just had around the property also don't mind the dahlias being all wilted down. I just moved them. They'll be fine in a few days time. These stones are probably not the stones that I'm going to go with permanently, but I want to get the gravel down because it's preventing us from being able to park in our driveway. So our main goal for today is just to get all the gravel down, get the seating in here and then get a sense of this new space. So I'll zoom out, which is giving us kind of a weird angle, but so you can kind of get the sense of how large the space is. Now, remember all of these raised beds are going to go and we're going to surround the book nook with hydrangeas. So all of these cut flowers, all of these vegetables, they're going to move over to the right side of the garden library. And this area right here, which is now still surrounded by raised beds is going to become a book nook where you can sit in this gravel patio, read a book in front of the library when the weather is nice. When the weather's not nice, you can go into the library. But I think all there is to show you for now is that I've leveled the space I've dug down and let me take you to the gravel that I chose. This is three eighths of an inch river Jack, and it looks a little bit white over there. But once you wash it off as I did over here in the keyhole garden, you can see that it's this beautiful gray, brown, not really too much white. I wanted it to just be gray and Brown. And even this is still dirty and could be washed off more, but this gives you a sense of what color gravel we're going to be using. And as you can see, everything is pretty ripped up at the moment. I moved the chairs. I got rid of our fire pit, which now I'll need to grass over. I'll just throw some dirt there and some Clover seed on top. I've started to move the raised beds over here, but as you can see, I haven't even leveled them yet. So it's definitely going to be one of those situations where it gets worse before it gets better. But without further ado, let's get to work on this project. And here's our last look at what the book Nook looks like before we lay the gravel. All right. So my wonderful husband who did all of the gravel work has generously agreed to hold the camera for us as we walk back to the new book Nook. So what we did so far is we removed the two central raised beds. We dug down three inches and leveled the ground. Then Nick came in, put about an inch of gravel down, and we're going to order a ton more of gravel. So we'll get about a three inch layer down total. But isn't this so exciting? You know, when we first had the library installed, it was much farther back and it was kind of an ending point for the raised bed garden. But because of it moving forward, it cast a ton of shade on all these raised beds, which really doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of growing cut flowers. But now I was able to move all of my raised beds over there. These ones are also going to move and the months ahead. And now when you walk into the library, you enter the secret book Nook, which can you see it right now? Nick, can you see the chairs in here? The idea is that you can't see this book Nook until you get into it. And I just think it's so special. You know, this year is going to be really different. We're surrounded by all of my sharing grace seedlings. This is the Dahlia collection that I'm working on from seed. So these are all of Grace's babies. I know some of you name these, this one, I remember someone called eyelash. We have Martha Miller right here, which is going to be available next year. But next year, all of this is going to be Haas, halo hydrangeas and limeta hydrangeas. So you'll just be surrounded with hydrangeas. And when you sit down in the book Nook, you won't be able to see anything, but the people that you're spending time with. And my husband's sitting down right now and he really did a lot of work, not to just make the scrabble happen for me, but just so much work with heavy lifting in the garden over the years. I want to cut this together because this is florets alpenglow zinnia and check that out, honey. Can you see that? Isn't that gorgeous? Here's another one by floret and I wanted to give her full credit because I think without her, I would probably be growing cut flowers, but I don't think I would have the passion that I have for them. And I know she's inspired so many of us. So I think it's just so special that we're here in the book Nook surrounded by her zinnia collection that she's worked so hard on. And the thought that look right now over here, honey, we have kind of Monarchs fluttering around us, enjoying sharing grace. It's just going to be such a special time to be able to spend time together with friends and family in the book Nook and to have a place to sit and relax that is actually not about cut flowers to kind of have a isolated place for cut flowers and isolated place to sit and spend time with family and friends. And I'm just really excited to build this brand new garden with all of you. So friends, thanks so much for hanging out with me today and we'll have lots more updates on this book Nook in the days and weeks ahead. Bye friends.