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Moving My Garden

© Clay Higgins

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The continuing saga of the trials and tribulations of a daffodil gardener

We moved to a new home this fall, late September 1999. Three acres of unimproved brush, small trees and weed land, with a small lawn front and rear. When we first planned the move, it was in the middle of a severe drought and I was more concerned about my garden, then moving my household. The garden move was a real experience! There was two major efforts that had to be accomplished, the movement of my main garden, and the movement of my show daffodil garden. The movement of the daffodil garden is a separate article scheduled for next week.

Daffodil gardeners are, after all, gardeners first, and procurers of the exotic narcissus or daffodil second. The former skills complement the latter.

This is a quick look at that front border garden that had to be moved.

First the lower side of my front border with peonies, siberian irises, and daylillies hiding the daffodil foliage.

Second, some of my show daffodils, cleverly hidden by poenies, and irises on the upper side of my front border.

Not to mention the azaleas.

Our New House below

Moving the Garden

My main perennial garden that had to be moved was my front border, as pictured in the first two photos above, that was about 200 feet long, and 30 feet wide at the narrowest point. This border is planted with hundreds of peonies, irises, siberian irises, hybrid daylilies, and thousands of naturalized daffodils. In the middle were two giant patches of "Tiger Lily" daylilies on both sides of my two giant "Star" magnolias that were split by the front sidewalk. In addition to that, there were about 800 azalea, and other flowering bushes that had to be moved.

It's bad enough that my flowers and bushes were growing in a drought condition, the new home had no garden, other than grass growing on hard packed red clay. All garden beds had to be built from scratch. The ground was hard, unforgiving, suffering from lack of water, and had the consistency of concrete when I first examined it. We were over 18 inches short of rain in 1999, added to a shortage of over 11 inches of rain from last year. My greatest fear was that I would lose my valuable plants.

It was a wild and rugged look to this new place. Fran saw me eyeing the lawn for new flower beds, and said, "We've got three acres. Spare me this small amount of lawn. Hack your garden out of the jungle." We had much brush, and three foot tall rag weed along with other weeds growing everywhere.

The copyright of the article Moving My Garden in Daffodil Growing & Showing is owned by Clay Higgins. Permission to republish Moving My Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.