The gardens at our new house are devastating. The woman who lived here previously had been here for eons. And had the same gardener for eons. EONS. He finely manicured everything in the garden into shapes. The camellias are espaliered across the fence, the small cedar trees in front are squares, the pear tree out back is an umbrella (seriously), and every single boxwood plant has been trimmed into a cylinder. The only things that haven't been trimmed into awkward shapes are the roses. RoseS as in plural - as in loads of roses. I don't know roses. It's a whole different kind of gardening to maintain roses - not necessarily one that I have ever been interested in.
But we have an agreement between Mr. Hedin and I. Nothing gets dramatically pruned, pulled out or moved until we have lived in this house for one year. -ish. There are a handful of things we agree on, like the cherry tree that seems to be missing all of it's branches except for one that sticks out to the right will be removed. The giant cedar trees that block the view and the sun will be removed.
Up until recently, I also thought all of the rose plants needed to go too. They are not really my thing + they are mostly pink. Actually everything in the yard is pink; peonies, roses, rhododendrons. And if it's not pink, it's purple. Yikes.
But since I didn't really care about the plants I have been cutting blossoms as soon as they sprout and bringing them in the house. That's when my mind started to change.
I love having fresh cut flowers in the house. In our last house we didn't have many 'cutting' flowers on purpose - a lush green garden was perfect for our lifestyle. But I also bought flowers almost every week. In the new house I have had fresh flowers every week and have hardly had to buy anything. This month the peonies are blossoming and lovely; the roses are actually quite long stemmed because no one has taken care of them for a while; the calla lillies we transplanted from our old house are doing miraculously well; it's hard to want to get rid of so many perfect cutting flowers now that I have had a month of lovely cut flowers.
What I would like to incorporate are ::
:: Herbs
:: Cutting flowers
:: Evergreen plants (so it has form year round)
:: Fruit trees
:: Grass
:: Play spaces for the kids
Combining all of those things is pretty intimidating. I don't know that it's entirely possible, but we'll do what we can! I'm turing to some of the experts for advice, photos, and suggestions.
This garden was planted at the New York Botanical Garden by Martha Stewart. This culinary herb garden makes me want to vomit. It's perfect. Not only is Mr. Hedin not going to prune the boxwood hedges, but I don't really see this being practical for kids. But I definitely need herbs in the yard somewhere. Pots? Ground cover?
Clearly Martha has more space than she knows what to do with.
Vegetable Garden at Bedford
Peonies for cutting at Bedford
I think we're a little more along the lines of 'small space gardening' which isn't really covered in your Martha gardens... Luckily, I have been a speaker at the Northwest Flower and Garden show and I have taken lots of pictures of things I like. Hopefully that will help guide some decisions this fall.
Pots from the NW Flower and Garden Show 2011
In the mean time I am starting to sketch up the property and the existing buildings, plants, and fences so we can start thinking about the next step! Stay tuned, I'll share more as we begin pulling out enormous trees and putting in fewer 'old lady' plants!
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