The End of Our Cactus Garden in Land Park

Nothing lasts forever, and most certainly not our cactus garden in Land Park. We put the cactus garden in long before it became trendy and cool to utilize drought-tolerant landscaping. The previous owners of our home had built the pergola and spa, which we removed a few years ago. We elected to install garden beds instead.

There used to be two 40-foot beech trees in a deck attached to the larger deck in the photo below. But one of those fell over on our house during the winter storm of January 2008. I never much cared for that second level deck anyway, so I tore it out with my own two hands.

The cactus garden was created by our landscaper, Kevin Morisawa. I met Kevin when I sold his home on 35th in South Land Park and sold him another. He was just taking over his father’s landscaping business at the time. Although he charged more than our existing gardeners, and much to the dismay of our neighbors, we changed gardeners. Hey, they could get their lawns cut on Friday like I do if they had listened to me, heh, heh.

Everybody around here likes their lawns done on the same day so we don’t have to put up with alternating days of noise pollution from blowers and mowers.

Over the years, however, the cactus garden bloomed with the most beautifully colored flowers. The problem with the garden was it did not stay like the photo above. This photo was taken in 2010, about two years after we planted the garden. Now, imagine each of those plants growing to ten times their size. Even the crepe myrtle tree seems tiny as compared to today’s height. However, removing the spa from our home was one of the better ideas I’ve had. When I looked back at the fact I had not used the spa for a long time, years and years, it made no sense to keep heating and cleaning it.

The photo above was show in the spring of 2016. For some reason, I have no photos of the disaster just before we ripped it out. Which, of course, I did not do. Our landscapers did that awful job of terminating the cactus garden in Land Park.

Kevin and his team of trimmers thinned out the crepe myrtle to allow sunlight to hit the dirt below it. Someday, maybe next week, we will have a lawn back. Yeah, I know. It would be more green to keep it a cactus garden. However, I do not have the time to manage this type of endeavor and grass is so much easier. Our cactus garden in Land Park has come to its end. I’ll post a photo after we get the area finished!