The Greeting Card Garden Syndrome: Are You Afflicted?


Fellow gardeners, are you made miserable each summer with The Greeting Card Garden Syndrome?

What's that, you ask?

This Greeting Card Garden Syndrome is a common affliction among owners of colonial-type homes and farm houses. It usually begins with an imagination run riot - one that visualizes bees buzzing in neatly laid out lavender beds on a hot summer day, rosemary edging a kitchen walkway and more than enough rose bushes and geraniums to supply petals for an entire winter's supply of potpourri sachets. Nourishing this vision are powers of invention that offer warmth of a mild sun and heady scents rising from a collection of decidedly traditional fragrant plants.

However, truth be told, The Greeting Card Garden Syndrome is unfounded romanticism firmly lodged in artistic minds. Sadly, if allowed to remain unchecked, this syndrome triumphs over the day-to-day reality of being a garden owner, and ends in frustration. In place of an imagined and sought after retreat, reality for the unsuspecting owner of such a dreamy design becomes one that demands unceasing care - a maintenance nightmare.

  • It shouldn't be this hard to make a beautiful garden!
  • I thought old-time gardeners just put their plants in the ground with a few egg shells and watched them grow!
  • What am I doing wrong?

These are wails and complaints of gardeners who want the idealized gardens they see in photographs and illustrations. How can home gardeners indulge in their dreams of traditional gardens, yet work out a plan realistic enough so they can be at peace with their gardens and the work demanded by them?

The answer is three-fold.

  1. Research and read everything you realistically can about your home and the style in which it is built.

    2. Herb gardens planned in a gardener's imagination, and old-fashioned cottage gardens, don't essentially go hand-in-hand or belong with every old or ostensibly old house. Fortunately, home gardeners have about as many landscape types or themes to choose from as there are houses with history.

    Home landscape and garden styles usually change slowly, and many times a certain fashion or technique lingers for centuries. Sometimes fashion propels change. For example, the reality is that 17th and 18th century farmyards weren't really landscaped or gardened - most of the space was devoted to work. Only after they were no longer working farms were they landscaped and began to be known as Gentleman Farms.

    The concept of Colonial Revival architecture and landscape design, began as a reminiscence of the beginnings of the United States. The evolution of this style parallels national trends that began with The International Exposition of 1876 held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence was written. Colonial Revival was committed in practice to the idea of colonial rather than to what had been colonial.

    The copyright of the article The Greeting Card Garden Syndrome: Are You Afflicted? in Landscape Design is owned by Georgene A. Bramlage. Permission to republish The Greeting Card Garden Syndrome: Are You Afflicted? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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