I’ve been landscaping in Connecticut for over 25 years. Even after all these years, I still get nervous whenever I have to dig a trench or I have to get a large tree ball into a landscape. Why? Because I’ve dug up way too many surprises over the years. My own property never ceases to amaze me. I’m positive that if granite was worth as much as some precious metals, small little Connecticut would without a doubt be the richest locale in the world. It seems that every time I have to dig a hole on my own property, it’s inevitable that I hit a piece of granite the size of a small car. My last trench was no exception. After a really dry summer and the loss of some expensive Viburnums in our nursery, I decided that it was time to invest in drip irrigation. The task included running the main irrigation line just under the soil. Of course, thirty feet into the project, we come across an obstruction. We tried to go around it but it was a no go, it was just too large. No problem, we’ll dig it out with the backhoe. Well it ended up being a big problem! So much so, that my new backhoe could barely pop this huge stone out of the hole. With a 4000 lift capacity on the tractor, I couldn’t even budge this behemoth. What started as a simple task of burying some pipe, turned into a big ordeal. Before my degree in Landscape Architecture, I received a two year degree in Horticulture from a school in Long Island. I remember learning the process of balling and burlapping trees. It was so easy back then. The soil profile consisted of a couple of inches of topsoil and a lot of sandy loam. I don’t ever remember seeing a rock in two years. Looking back at the experience, I think if I had gone to school in Connecticut, I just might be sitting behind a desk in some office complex somewhere.
