My Early Pennsylvania Garden
|
Posted by Barbara M. Martin Jun 8, 2006 |
I just came across some ancient photos of my Pennsylvania garden -- flowers galore, burbling fountain, even some veggies.
This old page of photos was published as part of a virtual garden tour back in spring 1996, if I remember correctly. At the time I was writing the Cottage Garden topic at suite101.com -- that topic debuted as EcoGardens so it might have been called that when these were initially published.
Back when these photos were taken, we had lived there just a year or two -- long enough to replace the roof and begin the digging!
And, my husband has just reminded me, these were taken with a real camera and then he scanned the slides for me. Whoah! I can hardly remember pre-digital life. Now that I think about it, we had a slow dial up connection back then, too. So last century!!
The previous owner had some neatly trimmed foundation plants: the obligatory Pennsylvania style yews, a couple of peonies, a Pieris japonica, three Catawba rhododendrons, two Delaware Valley white azaleas, two clematis vines, a few daffodils, a few iris. (Also a pair of arborvitaes at the corners of the house but the deer devoured them the first winter.) Also a lot of open lawn.
I remember the first time I looked outside and saw twenty some deer in my front yard eating and stomping in the newly fallen snow. I lost most of my first planting effort to them. Then I put up a simple but effective fence and things went along much better.
By the time we moved away from there, over ten years later, the garden had grown up considerably. I planted countless flowering trees and shrubs, flowering vines, and who knows what else. I loved to garden and I prefer to write about what I know, so I tried lots of different plants. I was lucky to have so many microclimates to try them in -- and as the years went on I became quite skilled at knowing where to plant each new plant so it would grow happily with little care.
Generally speaking I did not fuss over the garden or even water the garden (new plants might get a bucket of water for their first week or two) so it had to get along on its own. Each year was different, in part because of that. The weather really dictated which plants would do particularly well each year.
Eventually, the flowering trees and shrubs grew enough to fill in and create a screen from the road. I added more perennials in just about every bit of space. There were many self seeding annuals and biennials and tons of daffodils and chionodoxa, too. (The critters ate thousands of bulbs before I wised up!) The neighbor kids called it "the jungle house." By the time they were old enough to ride the high school bus, I couldn't see them at the school bus stop in my front yard any more!
After moving to California, I found I really missed the woods almost as much as I missed my garden. We owned wooded property going up the hill behind the house and also across the road; my dining room windows looked out across the main sunny flower garden down the gentle slope to the road, across the road we owned a bit of meadow and then more woods. The woods were predominantly oak and teeming with wildlife. This abundant natural display inspired me to add more and more native plants to my plant palette over the years.
We planted thousands of daffodils naturalized along all the woods and I miss seeing them in the spring. On the other hand, I don't really miss the cold winter weather so maybe it evens out. On the other hand, my waistline sure misses the gardening exercise! And on the other hand, well I guess I am all out of fingers now.