How shall my garden grow?
One of the best things about our house is that its previous owner was an avid gardener who liked to plant one of everything. We’ve got asparagus, rhubarb, peaches, apples, gooseberries, black currants and the most glorious display of snowdrops and grape hyacinths I’ve ever seen.
The worst thing about our house is that its previous owner was an avid gardener who liked to plant one of everything. In our front yard, clockwise from the corner of the house, we have a climbing rose (pink), a lilac (white), a camellia (fuchsia), a pieris japonica (mostly dead), a butterfly bush (deep purple), some random bush that blooms for months (blush pink), a large rhododendron (pink), another lilac (lilac), a witch hazel, a forsythia, an azalea (magenta), another rhody (also pink), a kowhai, a hebe (lavender), a blooming cherry with red foliage, a rose (cerise), hollyhocks (dark pink, magenta and pale pink), 3 or four peonies (peony), a large standard rose (mauve) and five shrub roses up against the house (shell, coral, cream, its-a-girl pink and lipstick).
To be fair, the previous occupant did try and temper things by under-planting everything with calendulas (blaze orange).
In late spring, when they’re all blooming, it feels like we live inside someone’s grandma’s underpants. Then, just when I think I’m going to have to bleach a jolly roger in the lawn or die of shame, they all finish and leave me with this …
Its not completely scorched earth, I do like that bed of dahlias in the corner
but the front bed is what people see as they walk past.
Its so full of bulbs that I can’t just throw some summer annuals in there because every trowel thrust cleaves at least one bulb. Really. Every time. So, naturally, I started hatching schemes for digging up the whole bed as soon as the first frost knocked everything back. There’s just one problem:
Yeah, that’s right. The tomatoes are rotting on the vine and my spring bulbs have sprouted.
Help!
All I can thing to do is scatter seeds or small bulbs (glads? more dahlias?) on the surface and dump some compost on top and hope that the bulbs can grow up through it.
Any ideas? please?
Category: New Zealand, Our House 2 comments »
March 20th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
You forgot the pink and white climbing geranium by the front door (or did my pruning efforts do it in?)
Sounds to me like you have a perfect excuse for expanding the beds – more flowers, less grass to cut. Some large showy any-color-but-pink dahlias would certainly fill up the space. I’m partial to autumn bronze myself.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:00 am
what about a few garden gnomes and fairies and elves? And perhaps a plastic snowman or two?
Seriously though, I’m waging the same war here but with less… pink… variety. I’m supposed to wait a year to see what comes up, right? I’m not that patient…. but we have some tulips and daffodils that are emerging on the east side of our house, much to my delight. Now to save them from the deer.
I agree with Nancy, though. Expansion of beds with some judicial splitting of plants and adding purple and blue and yellow could save grandma’s underpants next spring. And unless you have a sheep to rent, you’d not have to mow either.