Before we moved into our little house with a red rood and blue door, my husband and I shared an apartment with a nice long balcony, and that is where our love of gardening began.
We didn’t get much sun, but we still managed to grow 5 window boxes of herbs, greens, a hanging basket of tomatoes and a couple of pots of flowers for fun.
Now that we have a good size backyard, it’s hard not to go crazy with plans. While this is our third summer in the house, we’re still really novices when it comes to gardening. It’s tough to fight the urge to do it all NOW. Especially when I flip through glossy gardening magazines – it’s easy to forget that, in most cases, those gardeners many years to get to that point, and it’s always a work in progress.
Last year I stumbled upon some advice from Marjorie Harris in her book ‘How to Make a Garden’. Her book really helped me to think about our garden in terms of a multi-year project and then I was able to sit down and decide what I wanted and where and sketch out some plans.
I’ve now divided our garden in to sections. Vegetable Garden, Herb Garden, Butterfly Garden and Rock Garden. Each one is not so big, but in figuring out what we enjoy about in our garden, it was easy to divide out sections for different activities and start planing from there. I know that we won’t have a garden fit for a glossy magazine this year, but if I follow my plan…who knows?
My little sketchbook has also helped us plan projects and priorities for our yard. This year, our first spring project will be raised beds, and next figuring out how to make a pathway with pavers through the garden. If there is time, I would also like to build a cold frame. Down the road, maybe next year, we’ll think about an arbour and climbing roses.
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We’ve both had our garden for a short period of time and I find every spring I get overwhelmed with all the ideas I have (some sensible, some not) for what I want to accomplish in my relatively small space. The first couple of years it was just about ‘get it in the ground’, aka planting as much as feasibly possible! Now I’m using a more critical eye and coming to the conclusion that more isn’t always better. I applaud your long-term vision and hope I can do the same this year!
Sherry
It’s tough not to get overwhlemed with ideas in the Spring! I want my garden to look a certain way and I’m inspired by so many other gardens out there. Plus, the garden we inherited when we bought this house was beautiful, but not our style, so I have some serious guilt getting rid of or moving flowering plants to plant vegetebles. I think we have a couple of good goals this summer, and we will see if I can stick with it!