Olympic View - From Small Farm to Garden

medium sized Douglas Fir, two holly bushes, and two young Birches. There were a couple of recycled ³Christmas² trees in back that hardly counted and a few flowering shrubs. Anyway...against reason, we bought the place in 1975 (when our firstborn son was one month old).

My desire as far as the yard was concerned was to recreate the type of garden I had enjoyed as a child at Erland¹s Point (planted by nursery owners) but here, we were in the wide open spaces! I couldn¹t sneak into the yard to do a thing without anyone driving past getting an eyeful (you know...those little forays outside in your robe and slippers!). During the hottest weeks of summer there was no relief in the house and hardly any in the yard. The one Douglas Fir in the front swept the ground, so you couldn¹t exactly sit underneath. I thought we would NEVER have shade in the yard and at that point, I couldn¹t have had enough. After 20+ years of gardening here...I am having to get rid of things (you read about this, but never think it¹s going to happen to you when you want the garden to get established). After the first couple of years, we paid a whopping $50 to a landscape designer to draw up a large plan for us. That was a lot of money to us at the time, but worth every penny!

. We told her what we wanted and she did her best to suggest form and planting material. The yard at this point is not exactly to her plan, but it gave me a place to start in laying out the beds and bones of the garden. I knew what plants I liked, but was clueless as to principles of design! I¹m not suggesting I¹ve arrived at this point either, but I¹ve learned a lot more over the years from reading, observation and planting. When the previous owner of our place found out we were landscaping, he was amazed that we would take on landscaping a farm!

I was a rabid rhododendron collector when we first moved here in the 70¹s and was trying to make as many places for them as possible. In the past ten years, some of those bushes have been removed to make space for other plantings, particularly herbaceous perennials. Any monoculture garden is going to get boring...but you don¹t see this when you are a collector. When I browse web pages devoted to particular plants and see dozens of photos of

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic