Gardening

This is my second year of gardening at my house, and my ambitions and dreams have been slightly tempered by reality and experience. Last year, I wanted a wildflower garden - and got one... (Here it is in all it's wild glory on our wedding day.) The only problem was that wildflowers are weeds by another name! I couldn't tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers, and while it looked splendidly wild, I couldn't face doing that another year.

I'm also aware that we'll only live here for another year or so, and then someone else will come here who maybe doesn't like to spend a lot of time gardening. I want to leave a viable, low-maintenance garden behind, so that means bulbs and perennials and shrubby flowers which will come back year after year and look great without much effort. I already have a bed of daylilies in front, and gladioli in the back, and some potential daisies, though we're yet to see whether they will perk up properly or not. Now I've put in grasses, lavendar, asters, verbena, columbine and more bulbs whose name I can't remember, and I think it looks fabulous - and will look better and better all summer ;-)

Here you can see lavendar, cosmos, grasses and gladiolus, and my beautiful new brick edging.

Oh, and this year I'm on a mission against morning glories. I love them, but they take over a garden so fast. I figure if I pull out every single one I see, there'll still be more than enough left to strangle half my beds.

Here is my beautiful columbine in front.

Lastly, when life gives you many rocks and stones, after a while you just have to stop digging them up. So I'm going with pots everywhere I wanted flowers but can't bear to move more stones. Here's the geranium readjusting to sun and fresh air after a winter inside, next to the amazing regenerating rosebush which grows six feet each year. My neighour, Emily, is going to help me to take a cutting from it and make a new rosebush, since it just keeps coming back and back.