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That Picture Perfect Garden

© Carol Wallace

Every spring I approach my garden full of hopes. This is the year I'm going to get it right.

And every fall I leave my garden with regrets because "right" just didn't happen. The Japanese beetles ate the roses, the artemisia overgrew it's space, the dahlias got lost in the buddleia and there is just too much stuff with ferny foliage planted together - except that it has no place else to go.

I find myself wondering if I'm the only person with this problem. I look at pictures of other peoples' gardens and they always seem so perfect - nice blends of color and texture and shape, not too sparse and not too crowded. With every peek I become more determined to achieve that in my own yard. But I can't.

Why? Impatience, I think, and the failure to believe that things will really grow as promised. That, and my unfailing optimism when I see a plant I simply can't resist and bring it home SURE that there's a spot for it, mean perennial defeat.

I start out well. I rush out to the garden vigorously to do my spring clean-up, taking inventory as I go. I move a few things and discard a few things. I plant a few more things. And that's where I ought to leave it.

But I forget how many things don't really take off until June or later. There comes a day in May when I look at the bare spots in the beds and can't stand it - the have GOT to be filled.

OK - honesty forces me to admit that those spots aren't REALLY bare. I can see a mist of little green specks everywhere. Common sense tells me that this is going to be a whole forest of Nicotiana alata which, by July will be huge. But it's May, and they are mere specks in the earth in front of a lot of tall stuff - and everything looks out of proportion. An excellent reason to go nursery cruising to see if I can find a remedy.

And of COURSE I find a remedy. I find maybe FIVE remedies, some of which I actually have spaces for. So back to the garden I march, trowel in hand.

The first big decision is which of my five acquisitions is going to be THE remedy - the one I set out to find in the first place. I select one, based on color and texture and plant it. Fresh from it's quart pot, it looks unbearably puny in front of the seven-year-old perennials behind it. So maybe I need TWO remedies. In goes something else that might work.

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