So I've got a view. Now what to do with the soil. Frankly, as you can see from the pictures on the Starting the Garden it was full of boulders, was devoid of structure, nutrients, and organic matter. I rented a large rototiller and chewed it down as deep as the machine would allow. Then I used a Mattock, shovel, and wheelbarrow to move out the rocks, boulders, and old bottles, cans, shotgun casings, and such from the soil. It was very heavy work for a couple months. I called the city after this stage
and had them deliver a couple truckloads of sludge. Sludge is processed human manure. Cities love to give it away free and it is a great soil conditioner. I spread it and then rototilled it in and formed the initial outlines for the garden beds. I put in about 400 daffodils on the far perimeters of the front and tulips along the walk to the front door. In the picture above you don't get the direction of the mounds.
They are set up in a sunburst using the front door as the nexus and spreading radially like spokes on a wheel. This is more visible in the picture to the right. This arraingement made it easy to see to the ends of the wide beds and also convenient in bringing back gathered flowers. Once the beds were established they were never walked on again. Another feature you can see is the chicken wire I put under every bed. You can see it in the picture to the right. Obviously this was to thwart gophers. It was not as successful as I had hoped and was a lot of work to install. I ended up taking it all out. Next time I'll just use it as baskets for the rose roots. I then applied a granular fertilizer, drip irrigation system, and planted each of the beds. The wide bed planting was facilitated using 4'x4' plywood to kneel on to distribute my weight to minimize soil compression. Although the pathways appear wide they would disappear by midsummer as the flowers leaned into the empty space. Then all you could see is a sea of flowers the whole distance around the house. Very nice.