Goodbye to clay

Last year John and Marj Roth of Sunnyside Street in Ann Arbor gave up the backyard battle of the clay, one with which many an area gardener is familiar, and one with which the Roths themselves were well acquainted after more than 40 years in Ann Arbor. Instead, they built four one-foot-high raised boxes, filled them with good loam, put stone pathways between the boxed and said goodbye forever to the hardships of clay gardening.

Now, for the second year in a row, they have all the pleasures of luxuriant vegetable beds of peas, beets, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, squash, spinach - and none of the pain of hacking away at hard soil. Marj likes the boxes because she can sit on them to do the weeding. "It's a lot of work but it's worth it," she says, thinking ahead to the tender peas that will soon be theirs for the savoring.

Do you know of a garden you'd like to see featured in this column? Send your suggestion to Beautiful Ideas, Garden Editor, The Ann Arbor News, P. O. Box 1147, Ann Arbor 48106.