I have always wanted to be a hobbyist gardner. Not the kind of horticultural expert that turns my tiny yard into a showcase that newspapers and magazines want to come photograph and give awards to. Just some nice landscaping that I can enjoy throughout the year.
My low ambitions, however, have no bearing on the level of fervor that January brings on, when I'm in 'gardening mode.' I've lived in this house for 13 years, and from day one I started trying to fix up the yard. I have more or less completely failed, for a variety of reasons, but fortunately I know what most of them are, and have hopes of correcting them this year.
One problem has always been money. I'd take a plot of land I wanted to turn into a flower bed, and go nuts picking perennials from gardening catalogs - (I considered perennials more cost-effective than annuals, because you don't have to spend money for flowers for the same spot year after year) - then realize it was going to cost me $400 to buy all those plants. I couldn't afford it. I'd buy 2 or 3 plants (for a 6' x 10' area), thinking I would 'start small' and work my way up. But those few straggly plants, not living up to my grandiose expectations, would soon become neglected, wither and die. I would give up for a few years.
Another problem in recent years has been lack of time and having far more important things to occupy myself with.
The time problem is no longer an issue, and I can spend as much or as little of it as I like on the yard this year.
The money problem remains to be seen. It's still somewhat of an issue, but not as much as it has been in the past. But more importantly, I've finally learned a couple of lessons. One is that if my vision for an area requires 15 or 20 plants, only buying 2 of them and expecting the area to look anything like my vision isn't going to make me happy. I either need to pony up for the number I need to get things started right, realizing that (if all goes well), I won't have that financial layout every year (at least not for that particular bed), and hopefully I can just get down to maintaining my investment; or I need to learn the fine art of patience, understanding that buying plants piecemeal over a number of years will eventually get me what I want, but it's going to take time, and for it to work, I have to care for and maintain the small investment I do make each year, to some day have the garden I envision now.
I'm planning to adopt a sort of middle of the road strategy. I'm willing to invest a little more money in plants this year than I have in the past, to get a little better jump start; while at the same time looking at this as a long term endeavor, trying to see the big picture that will emerge down the road. That's the plan, anyway.
I have several areas around the property that need desperate work. I'm not going to try to tackle them all this year. Since my favorite focal point is the pond garden, I'm going to concentrate my efforts there this year, patching up the rest of the place as best as I can till other years. That is the first step in phasing this thing through a couple years to keep the cost bearable.
So I look at this ...
... and all I see is potential for the coming spring. There's a lot of work to be done, that's for sure. For one thing, I want those two rounded evergreen shrubs out of there. They just don't fit in with my scheme. They are not doing well as it is, but I plan to move them (I would never get rid of anything that's still living, however tenuously) some place I hope they will be happier. Then I will have the expanse from the tall pointy evergreen on the far left, which you can't see in this picture (don't you love my use of proper names?) all the way to the pond.
I need to seriously work on the soil in that bed. It's so clay-ey I can barely plant anything there. My endeavor with a few annuals last year amounted to mostly digging a hole, setting the plant in, and throwing a few chunks of clay back on top to hold it in place. Not gonna work. I know I need to condition the soil heavily, with good organic something-or-other. Hopefully the local nursery will help me choose something appropriate. Then it's dig, dig, dig. For awhile.
The leggy, non-blooming lilac is in the middle of a 3-year pruning plan - the first time I've ever undertaken and maintained any kind of long term garden goal. I love lilacs, but this one has become so tall and thin and malnourished that it usually only gets about 6 or 7 blooms on it in the spring, and those clear at the top - that's just sad. Rather than taking the hard line approach of cutting the whole thing back in one year, I've been slowly pruning it back following a 3-year plan I found online. Hopefully at the end of that, it will again be a relatively compact, bushy, heavily blooming lilac.
The little dead looking azalea over on the right side also needs severely cut back, to fill out and enjoy some rejuvenated bloom. It, too, is all leggy and feeble, only getting a handful of flowers last spring. That, unfortunately, doesn't have a 3-year plan. It'll probably all get cut back to 6" or 8" above the ground this spring, which will probably do away with any bloom this year, but hopefully rejuvenate it for next year.
Although he's fast asleep underground at the moment, there's a giant hosta in front of that lilac that is about to take over the entire bed. This spring that hosta will get dug up, divided, and replanted - half where it is, and the other half across the pond from him, for a little balance in the landscape. Dividing hostas is one thing I have managed to do successfully in the past, so I'm hopeful that will work out well.
Last year I planted some impatiens behind the pond. But they didn't do very well, which I found odd - I've been known to throw a bunch of impatiens into some soil along the driveway, and have masses of them by mid-summer, spilling out into the driveway, with little attention on my part. It was excessively dry last year, and although I did water them, it probably wasn't as often or as deep as necessary. But the main problem back there is that the pond is really too close to the fence, there's only about 2" between the two, and I can't get into that area to really dig things up or get the plants in the ground well. I've decided to forego that torture, and fill the space behind the pond with a wire planter lined with sphagnum moss, hung just off the ground, filled with impatiens and cascading petunias. If that goes as planned, the flowers will fill the planter and spill over the sides, maybe even to hanging down around the stones that edge the pond - and that'll look cool.
Those are the relatively easy and inexpensive parts of the plans. The tricky part came while trying to plan out the expanse between the pond and the remaining evergreen I plan to leave. I'll tell you what - planning a garden for a very tiny space may be harder (if less expensive) than planning for a large area. To me, anyway - complete neophyte that I am. I kind of like the look of those cottage gardens, but with a formal-looking, trimmed conical evergreen on one end, and a pond on the other, I didn't think a big falling-about mass of cottage flower-type plantings would really fit there. I decided to go simple - a good idea on a number of levels. I am planning to just kind of fill that area with only two main plants, then edge the front and around the left side of the pond with some annuals. The plants I'm considering for the main area are some hardy geraniums in the back in a kind of 'C'-shape, with a patch of daisies (because I love daisies) filling in the center of the C. I don't want it too formal, like an English herb garden, but in such a small space, some organization will, I think, make it look better.
That's the plan anyway ... we'll see how that works. And fortunately it shouldn't require hundreds of dollars worth of plants to try this out. In fact, I think I'm even going to try my hand at starting a few things from seed. So very much cheaper, if I can find the space indoors to do it.
It's supposed to be in the 50s this weekend ... wonder if it's too early to start digging?
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