My Neglected Garden

I do gardening for money and during the months of June and July I barely keep the grass in my garden mowed. When I was trying to make money by doing artwork, I put more effort into my garden because it was nice to work out of doors after spending hours painting indoors. Now, when I get home from working in other gardens, I just don't feel like working in my own.

When my garden was younger, the wilder parts of it were actually more difficult to maintain than the formal flowerbeds; this was because the flowerbeds have paths which make weeding easy. Weeding was difficult in the wilder parts because there wasn't anyplace to put my feet. Now that the wilder plantings have matured, they don't really need much weeding. This is not to say that the wilder plantings have a manicured effect; the trees and shrubs are just tall enough to not be swamped by the weeds and they shade out a lot of them.

I am especially pleased with my bamboo groves as they mature; they are becoming one of the most impressive features in my garden. The bamboo shade out most of the weeds and they put down a dense mulch of shed leaves which inhibit the germination of most weeds. People tend to think of bamboo as high maintenance because of their invasiveness, but if you remove unwanted culms as they emerge from the ground, bamboo is quite easy to control. I usually just kick over the unwanted shoots; I only have to cut culms when I have let them get too large and tough.

It is the more formal areas of my garden which have suffered the most from neglect. I have removed the dahlias from the small parterre in the original part of my garden and replanted the beds with roses; that part of the garden will be more impressive in a year or two after the roses are well established. I have pruned the espaliered fruit trees with enclose two sides of this part of the garden. Very few people in this area grow fruit trees as espaliers, so visitors are always impressed with mine. Once the structure of espaliered fruit trees is established, they only need to be pruned once a year in late summer; it is actually good for them to be shaggy in early summer. If you remove new growth all summer, you weaken the trees. This is an example of how a certain amount of neglect can actually be good for plants.