5 Comments
User's avatar
Joanne Toft's avatar

I was just thinking in these lines today. Two years of hip issue as let most of my garden to develop on its own. This year slowly but surely I am working my way through the garden to hopefully gain some sense of order. Many native plants are growing but becoming thugs. Time to help them step back and let others shine. I hope! Thanks for this essay.

The Uncompliant's avatar

Though, as you know, I have to have others tend my garden now, I never really cared about rules or what anyone else thought. I planted what I liked and in the colors I liked. And for the most part, I think it has stood the test of time. I still love it, and that's the important thing. I'm sure it would look very different if I could still work in it, but the bones have endured.

Kathy Purdy's avatar

I wasn’t talking about what I planted or what colors. By doing it right, I meant keeping things weeded, edged, pruned, and divided as needed. It rarely happened in that first garden and certainly never happened throughout the garden, ever.

Carol J Michel's avatar

Show me a gardener who isn't behind on weeding, deadheading, planting, etc., and I'll show you someone who either has help -or- a very tiny garden! To quote Barbara Dodge Borland, ""A gardener learns more in the failures than in the successes."

Kathy Purdy's avatar

Yes, my essay was my own particular experience of that quote