Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco

Consider a visit to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.  Aside from being an amazing tourist attraction, it is also a great place to go for ideas on landscaping your yard.

Of course, the place is fantastic from a cultural perspective, too.  The gardens host a Japanese tea ceremony every Wednesday (by appointment).

And, the Japanese garden in Saratoga -- Hakone Gardens -- is another place worth spending some time to get inspired.

Wood Chips

With the new sidewalk in place, I started thinking about whether I could do anything to make the area around our big tree a bit nicer.  One day, while wandering around the neighborhood, my son noticed a toy helicopter lying on the ground near a tree.  He started playing with it.  About 3 minutes later, the property owner came out and asked us to move because she was going to put wood chips down around the tree.  She wasn't rude about it, and even surprisingly offered to let my son keep the helicopter.  We didn't keep the helicopter.  But the wood chips seemed like a good way to solve my tree-related question.

Before:

During:

  It took about five large bags of chips to surround the tree.

Finished Sidewalk

Bringing my series of posts about our sidewalk to a close, here is the finished product.  Looks pretty good:

Unfortunately, the sidewalk ended up a lot closer to our hedge than I would have liked.  The front of the hedge is suffering and I'm going to have to trim it back.

Bungalow Heaven Gardening

My vote for top garden at the Bungalow Heaven home tour goes to a home that wasn't even on the tour.  Obviously this is based on looking at the landscaping/gardening in the front yards of the homes in this neighborhood.  But you have to admit, this front yard garden is popping with color.