Local Heritage Garden 1: 2012 Summary

Where to begin? It's still Saturday, February 9, a foot of snow on the ground. My mind turns to gardening, naturally. But where to begin? It seems an endless topic and my own gardens are so paltry, they really don't seem worthy of a blog topic. Still, this spring will be my second in the house and I spend a lot of time trying to garden (or trying to "yard," more like it). Probably more apt to title this the trials and tribulations of the small time gardener. I dearly love flowers and herbs, yet it seems the more I try, the less I know.

So still, where to begin? Well, it seems time to order a few seeds and things for the spring. I've never done that. To do that, I have to think about design. Urgh. Not a lot of help there.

Photos. Perhaps. Let me try to find the best and worst of last year.

I'd put a few bulbs in right after we arrived, the first fall, and the very best show was in the spring, right after we got back from our honeymoon--tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, forsythia:

This is a magical place in the spring. I can feel the age of the land, its less-tampered-with quality because the house has been in place for almost 200 years. As far as I can tell, the yard hasn't been wed-or-fed, certainly not lately, perhaps not ever. There are naturalized crocuses and courses of wild flowers, blue, white and yellow, pink, threaded all through the bright spring grass, against a backbone of more domestic but long established azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwood, and the (unusual to me, coming from the midwest) early blooming andromeda (pieris japonica). The explosion of color and profusion of what is clearly a long, long established eco-system gave me the idea of trying to create or re-create a garden that would stay true to the place.

I honestly don't know what that means. This was a farmhouse. It wasn't a Victorian home with a formal garden. It doesn't even have the feel of informal English gardens. But it seems clear to me that the women and men who have lived here have loved this postage stamp of land and that it has attracted owners who love to garden, along the lines of what might be considered an old-fashioned American way.

So I figure that a garden that hews more to American folk would suit the house. It's the summer flowers that have disappeared in the intervening years, that I want to put here, or as I think of it, put back. Irises. Roses. Lilac. Peonies. Lily of the Valley. Day Lilies. Black-eyed Susans. Zinnias. Marigolds. That's what I want.

My first attempts last summer were pretty meager. Here's a month-by-month journal of sorts:

June:

The bulbs were done in the garden by the studio door, so I put in a few perennials--coneflower, black-eyed susans and russian sage--, some herbs--thyme, chives, oregano--, and planted seeds of poppy, marigold, alyssum and zinnia ... waiting ...

I ordered day lilies and dug up a patch of grass by the garage that was impossible to mow, thinking that a south wall would make an excellent spot for a day lily garden, and put in nasturtium seeds for ground cover ...

I planted some plants that tolerate dry conditions on the dry hill near the well--iris, guara, and two kinds of sedum ...

And, my most successful move, hanging geraniums on the front porch ...

July:

I realize there really isn't enough sun next to the house for the sun-loving perennials ...

or the day lilies on the south wall of the garage, which are struggling.

And the well garden has gone dormant, uninteresting, tho the weed tree is happy.

August:

The hosta, snapdragons and parsley in the shady corner of the patio are happy, but the patio has been completely taken over by crab grass ...

The garden by the studio door has finally taken off like gangbusters -- green and pink zinnias giant-headed and full of butterflies ...

But I'm not happy with the well garden, so I take out the weed tree, move the iris, and add coreopsis and a feathery old-fashioned pink plant whose name I forget, yarrow, it is ... and an unusual kind of plain portulaca ...

Giant crab grass has overtaken the day lilies, and after much pondering (and Capel's insistence that the forsythia absolutely must not continue to overhang the street so), I agree to severely prune back the forsythia, really to get more light to the day lilies, I say, really ...

I try really hard to prune it without taming its wild-haired look. After a long day's work, it's a bit more manageable in size while still looking totally unruly (and I might note, still arching subtly over the street), but the crab grass will have to wait ...

In the front yard, a new little summer garden of lavender, coleus, nasturtium and pink dahlias is doing well.

But the north boundary of the property has been completely overtaken by giant unnamable rhizomatic weeds ... and vines ...

There are a number of old flowering bushes in this border, but no hope of rescue for them this summer. ...

September:

The hosta, parsley and snapdragons in the corner are happy, as is the crab grass, which has now totally overtaken the patio. 

I spend several weekends digging up the patio crab grass with the handle of a teaspoon (truly), not even getting to most of it, with modest results here and there. As I weed, I plant creeping thyme, to try to force out the crab grass, because I refuse to spray the patio, which has its own marvelous ecosystem of ants, mosses, seasonal plants and other interesting denizens. Won't bore you with the details here, just the results--tiny bits of thyme and other creeping covers:

The zinnias continue to be merry ...

The well garden has a brief moment of glory, with the guara, portulaca, yarrow, coreopsis and nasturtium all in bloom ... tho it still doesn't look anything like what I have imagined it could, in my head ...

And I finally spend an afternoon weeding the impossibly high crab grass in the day lilies ...

I take out two giant Lowes yard refuse bags of crab grass. When I'm done, it's marginally better ... the nasturtiums have done much better than the lilies. At this point, I'm just hoping the lilies get established, so I have better results next year ...

But then I realize the stump on the far side of the day lilies has an invasive patch of poison ivy, which I have been watering along with the lilies, and it has sprouted hydra-heads everywhere. That I recruit Capel's help for, and on a non-windy day, he helps me spray. It wilts. Yay.

Best of all, an old stump near the garage has sprouted! Probably what we used to call a snowball bush, one of the viburnums. A neighbor's yard has a giant bush with the same leaves and giant white blooms, but of course I don't know what that one is called either ... so we shall see if mine blooms this year ...

Sometime in this timeframe, I spend a few weekends trying to rescue the rhododendron stand by the front porch. But I won't go into details here. That's a longer story. Then the bathroom overtakes all.

Late October:

Bathroom done, mostly. While frantically trying to finish the porch column bases, I'm also still fussing with the well garden. The nasturtiums shaded out the sedum, so that seems a lost cause. I plant more bulbs. I don't even remember what now. But these are my last garden efforts on what turns out to be the last sunny fall day, winter nearing ...