Tag Archives: garden

Oh, Cottage Garden!

A cottage garden is not for everyone, and definitely not for the faint of heart. When you hear true cottage gardeners speak about our gardens (who am I kidding, we gush) it is not unusual for us to say that every time we dig a hole to put in a new plant, we dig up a bulb. That, dear reader, is true. And when we dig up that bulb, most of the time we have no idea what it is until next blooming season when there’s a missing favorite. But. That gives us an excuse to go to the nursery!

My sister’s flower garden is organized by color. She buys flowers for the peach bed, the red bed, the purple bed, etc etc. And she knows all of the names, whereas I say, “You know, the purple spikey thing.” If a particular flower doesn’t match, she doesn’t buy it. I’m heartbroken for the little rejected plants. I want them all. And I do know plant names; I just can’t remember them all because I don’t want to. That’s okay because I love them and I …don’t tell…talk to them. And don’t tell her, but I feel her garden is a bit stifled…unlike my cacophony. Hahaha.

She calls my garden a clown garden. Hahaha. I love it. By the way, REAL gardeners stay out there among the plants and weeds and insects as long as we can, and if we are not digging, we are often in our garden gloves, holding our garden tools, just standing, looking at our garden. We can’t help ourselves, and if you look closely, you’ll see us smiling.

I complain because I don’t have a big yard, and right now, I have nearly all plantable space…planted. But I go out with the squinty eyes, plotting how to make less grass, more flower beds. My yard is fenced, and that’s good, because it’s a bit like the person who lives here has no self control. MAYBE she doesn’t. A while back after watching hours of gardening YouTube videos, I decided to raise up the beauty. Go vertical! I bought an arbor, some trellises and plant stands of varying heights. So now, envision:

There are 4 anchor bushes, a Loropetalum (now 8 feet tall, pruned as a tree), a Japanese style conifer which only gets 5 feet tall (can’t recall the name), one Jazz Hands Chinese Fringe Flower, one Florida Sunshine (smells like licorice if you stroke the leaves). Those are the anchors. And then two climbing roses (one pink, one coral), an arbor hosting Chinese Honeysuckle. This honeysuckle has to be minded, because it can get a bit enthusiastic. Those are the main vertical show-offs. I am the boss of my garden and I expect my plants to stay where they are, not try to jump the fence. Sis thinks I’m ruthless. I think I’m a boss. And my honeysuckle behaves. Once, the English Ivey did not. Enough said about that. Point is, I guess you can say I made the most of the space I have.

I have hydrangeas (two pink, one red, one white), one columnar gardenia, two peonies (one pink, one red), one Fatsia Japonica in a pot, one rose (peach), five hellebores, two heucheras, four gerbera daisies, pink calla lilies, Phaseon Canna in a pot, one Lamium (love that plant), two sedum plants (you can NOT harm those plants), many geraniums that I winter over each year, a collection of ferns in pots that live on the porch over winter, Daisy Mae daisies, Asiatic lilies, pink Deutzia, several pink cone flowers (I’ve decided I like them the best) a host of irises (some specialty), many geraniums of course, marigolds and marigolds, vinca of pink and red, purple petunia, one Mandivilla, miniature and regular Hosta plants, white and red Amaryllis, tall Phlox, and over a hundred bulbs and annuals.

My plant stands are various heights, so I have potted plants tucked in here and there at various heights for visual interest, and one chair pushed in among the ferns on my patio, so I can sit down while I drink in coffee and the beauty of my oasis. I’ve come to the point of not needing to buy many annuals, other than to put splashes of color while I wait for the ‘usuals’ to bloom. My tiny yard is my joyful place, an oasis of nature. I like for my garden to look like nature celebrating, even though it’s under my tight guidance.

I started gardening as a teen, mostly vegetables, but I’ve always had flower beds and in one home, people would stop by the roadside and ask how in the world I got grass to grow in THAT soil. The secret was trucking in good soil and water, water, water. Flower gardening has always been my happy place. In fact now, I have a sign post with a street sign, ordered from Amazon of course, that says, “Happy Pl.”

I’m watching a gardener on TV as I type this, and he said, “I just put these in wherever I can find a spot.” That made me love him, and inspired me to write this message to you. Ah, Cottage Gardeners.

I have a shirt that says, “Professional Pot Mover” because if my potted plants aren’t happy, I hear their complaints and move them to a better spot. Over the years I have learned what works where during what season. It happens organically. If you want to destress, I’ll tell you, gardening is the way. And you can’t make a bad one. You just can’t.

Morning in the Garden

I hardly visit my small garden without pruning shears of some kind in hand.  I don’t know the standard names for all of them; I just know some need to be tough and some need to be easy on the plants.  This morning and most mornings these days I use the ones I call snippers. They are good for deadheading and for threatening plants back into the footprint I allow them to occupy.

My sister calls me the impatient gardener, laughingly, because I’m always ridding the garden of shriveled leaves, dying flowers, wayward branches; you get the drift.  I realize that the real gardeners have the vapors when I talk about pruning at the ‘wrong time’; but I find that my plants love to be pruned. They always respond well, and maybe it is because I love them and it is important to me that they be healthy and lovely.  And yes, I have sacrificed annual blooms for the sake of a healthy plant.  That’s okay; they come back stronger and happier.

The garden behind my townhouse is tiny.  I fenced in the yard and promptly built raised beds all around.  Each year for the first several, I widened the beds farther into the grassy area, hoping to have many flowers, few grass blades.  It worked.  In the center of my tiny grassy spot I have an 8 foot tall maple tree in a pot.  I grew the tree from a twig, pruning it into what I call a Japanese shape, as it grew.  It is taller than me now, so I’ll need a different strategy going forward.  When it gets too big, I will donate it and start over.  I guess I’m fostering the tree.

I prune away branches growing inside and across other branches, in part for the health of the tree and in part to keep it from becoming a sail…thus tipping over, pot and all.  This tree came into my garden because I needed to shade part of the garden from the harsh afternoon sun.  So it does double duty: It is beautiful and gives me joy, and it shades the plants that used to suffer because there was no shade to protect them.

Because my little garden is tiny, I can keep it weeded and mulched, and it is easy to deadhead the flowers.  Nearly every square inch of space is occupied by a beautiful plant of some kind.  I had a hellebore binge, a conifer binge; I have irises, lilies, peonies, calla and canna lilies, asiatic lilies, ferns, roses, hostas, gardenias, geraniums, hydrangeas, elephant ears, bear breeches, alliums, vinca, verbena, cone flowers, begonias, to name just a few.  Yes, there are many more.  I plant petunias, pansies and vinca seasonally with the intention to have color all season long.  My conifers are dwarf or exceptionally slow growing, to save space.  And I use a lot of vertical space too, so I have pots on columns, on the ground, in plant stands.  I watched a young man with a garden smaller than mine, growing only green plants of different shades and textures and it was lovely.  That sent me off on another tangent I’m glad I explored.  I planted a cryptomeria during that phase, because of its texture.  

The thing is, you never learn all there is to know about gardening.  New hybrids come forth each year, changing everything you thought you knew, and creating excitement among us gardeners.  There’s a brand new boxwood this year, did you know?  Probably not available to mere mortals like me, but it will be all the rage, I’m sure.

The nice thing about gardening is that you go a long time before you age out of it.  The only hard part for me is lugging in all of the pots for winter.  I used to have no problems with that, but now, it’s a chore.  Has to be done, though, because the plants can’t move themselves and I want them to live out the winter on the enclosed porch.

This season I’ve planted Kentucky Wonder beans on my arbor, to entertwine with the honeysuckle already there.  I’ll be able to pick beans under the arbor, smelling sweet honeysuckle, in a couple of months and I can’t wait.  Squash adds nice foliage to a flower bed, too, and you have the benefit of a yummy vegetable along the way.  My sister says my beds are “Jurassic Park” beds because my plants leap out of the ground and vegetable plants go crazy.  It’s all about soil amendment, really.  Once you get it right, gardening is easy.  Most of the time.

A well tended garden adds value to your life and to your property.  Nothing looks sadder to me than a beautiful home left bare of plantings.  If you don’t know how to grow plants, my guess is that someone like me would love to landscape your home…you pay for the plants of course.  Because.  Gardeners are addicts. Don’t say I told you.

I’m Brenda.  I’m a real estate agent and I help folks buy and sell homes with my company, The Premier Advantage Realty.  You can find me online at http://www.thepremieradvantage.com.

Hope you will plant a flower today!