Man. Lame thread title. Forgive me; I'm out of practice.

I've been spending all my spare time in the garden recently, doing boring, laborious landscaping work more than anything. I'm turning everything into rose gardens, and putting brick edging on all my paths. We just replaced our front "lawn" (really, some mowed brown weeds) with a perennial garden. I hate to say it, but I'm just about sick of gardening.

I'm not sick of talking about it, though. So tell me about your garden. Is it big? Is it imaginary? Is it a pot of basil on your windowsill? Discuss.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

Answers

My garden currently exists only in my head. We keep moving to teeny little apartments with no space for gardening (not that I would want to as there are several lightfingered people about - containers etc. are fair game apparently). Anyhow, we hope to be purchasing a house in the fall so I am free to dream of gardens - hopefully they will soon be realised!

I am pretty easy with what I do and don't like - Beth it amazes me to read about all the plants that are available over there that survive. I am so conditioned to the freezing winters (I grew up in a place that was Zone 3 - now I am living in a Zone 4 place) so I need to go do a bit of poking and see what is available. This is where I got the Zone info from - I don't know if our Canadian system labels them the same - I am assuming so, I couldn't find a picture.

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hzm-ne1.html

I do love roses, but as far as I can remember, the only luck my mum and I had in our little town outside of Ottawa was the Explorer line of roses. They aren't as fancy as some of the ones you have, but they do weather the winter quite nicely.

I want to have a little vegetable patch, and I want to have as little grass as possible. I would love to have little grassy paths meandering about, leading to little alcoves and nooks in the space. I also want to build a folly.

Have you ever seen the Toronto Music Garden? There are overall pictures of the design here and here that is from when the garden was first built - it's filled in a lot since then. I want to steal tons of elements from this garden. It is right on the waterfront in Toronto, a stone's throw from Skydome and the rest of the city. When you are standing in it, it feels like the rest of the city has disappeared. I want that same kind of inviting, mysterious feeling in my garden.

Sorry for the length - I get excited when talking gardens. (btw - Beth your garden is gorgeous!)

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

We went crazy this year. Carl built a vegetable garden in the back (very pretty design, complete with sprinklers) and it looked so nice, we're working on other parts of the back yard. This entire yard looks like the previous owner went to the ugly store and got the worst of the worst and then let it all get spindly (or dead), so there's lots of work to do.

We're concentrating on a small corner in the back yard where we usually sit outside in the evenings. To this end, we went to a sale at the LSU Burden Research center -- a once-a-year sale to the public to fund their research (doing hybrids, etc.) The plants are awesome... and cheap. We took so long to decide on some things, they announced a two-for-one price on anything not yet sold so they could clear it on out. (They had started out with 17,000 plants and still had half that at one o'clock.) We couldn't believe our luck -- one time when being the early bird was definitely not an advantage -- and we bought an entire truck load of plants. Now that they're sitting in the back yard, I can see that we could have used four times that many. And damn, the prices were astounding. (Half-gallon buckets of day-lillies, expensive hybrids made from $100 plants... were 5 for $10.)

I've also gone crazy on the container gardening. Last August I bought a couple of things and managed to keep them alive for more than a few days (!!) and they're still thriving. I've added all sorts of flowers and hanging baskets and have plans to do more. I love the color and warmth they give the house. It finally has started feeling like our home, and we've been here 2 1/2 years!

If you had told me even a year ago that we would have been (a) gardening and (b) loving it and (c) that it would look this beautiful, I would have thought you needed an insanity hearing. Who'd-a-thunk?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

On my fire escape, currently, is a lovely bluegreen crackled-paint pot, out of which is growing a stick. Just a big stick. It used to be a plant, at one point. It was lovely, and had leaves, and even a flower. But now, now it is a stick.

I think it's safe to say that I can't grow things. But in my head, where it is warm and sunny and I am wearing a floaty white dress and a straw hat, and a basket over my arm, I am strolling through a garden of riotously blooming wildflowers. And there are no bees.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

This year I am doing the prepatory work I should have done last year. Except for the vegetable garden. That exists. It's a 6'x12' raised frame full of lovely gardener's mix. This week I am going to transplant my little bundles of joy, the tomatoes and eggplants I started from seed in early April. Then I figure by the end of the week they'll be dead and then I'll put in seedlings from Home Despot. The only other things I'm planting or transplanting this year are pansies and petunias which are dull and boring but Easy, in pots on my porch. Also I am going to dig out and turn under the grass in the easement and cover it with mulch, for as much of its 7'x45' length as my pile of mulch will cover three inches deep--not much, but enough to cover the worst bare patch.

I have Plans, big Plans, mostly all just little mere plans. We need to do Something with the ground around the porch to keep it from settling any more, and to drain precipitation away from it--last week during an unprecedented four days of rain the northwest corner of the basement leaked. Wheeee. After *that's* done, I'll see what the front garden can become.

Beth, you just replaced your *whole* front lawn with perennials? At once, one fell swoop? That seems like it would have been quite costly? Or do you just know how to budget better than I do (anyone would) or prioritize better?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

I have 2 pots. One of them has some itsybitsy catnip seedlings with what I am hoping are ROOT HAIRS and not FUNGUS poking out of the soil.... I am pretty sure they are just roots, actually, but terrified that they are fungal. The other one has some yet-to-sprout jalapeno seeds, per my husband's request. I DID have a whole little miniature forest of spruce seedlings right around Christmas, but thatdamncat ate them all.

GRR.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

Lisa: Bluestone Perennials. Tiny little perennials, very cheap. I did spring for a few shrubs in gallon containers, at $6-$12 each, and we bought one $50 tree. Jeremy's parents gave us a good-sized Japanese maple. Everything else is tiny, but it will all fill in eventually. Our neighbors are pretty casual about these things, fortunately.

And our lawn is tiny.

I did buy a bunch of bareroot dormant perennials, which is also a cheap way to go. But the whether and Jeremy's knee didn't cooperate with our planned schedule for the sprinkler installation, and I think a lot of those things went from "dormant" to "dead" while they were waiting. I planted them anyway, but I'm not hopeful. Thank God for Bluestone.

Oh, and my garden is NOT gorgeous. It's a dog run. I just photograph it very selectively.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

It keeps getting bigger which is exactly what I want. I told my husband the other day that we could be putting in beds for the next 10 years and STILL have room to play with. I love the endless possibilities.

I love my garden yard. http://www.justme.org/garden/

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

I have a tiny strip of a back garden in my rental house which is framed by a falling-down fence and ugly lengths of yellow twine to keep deer out, but it is in complete riotous bloom right now and every time I walk outside, I get all happy. Mostly, it is a container garden which takes up almost all patio space, but the long fenced border is all planted.

Unfortunately, the whiteflies, the gophers, the moles, the squirrels and the deer also are quite happy in my garden. Sometimes I feel as if I am in an ongoing pitched battle with nature.

However. If there is any justice in this world, we'll find a house to buy pretty soon, far away from the deer, completely without forest- sized needle-dropping pine trees, and with enough garden room to grow tomatoes. I'm all dreamy with that possibility.

And if we do move, all of my lovingly collected specimen plants (my babies!) are coming with me. Even the ones I've planted. Screw the "what is in the ground belongs to the landlord" laws. It was a desert when we moved in and it is a garden now. When we leave, I'm not going to be leaving much behind.

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

I can hardly get out to my garden right now, because it's a fog of black flies, but it looks really pretty!

I've been updating my garden journal pretty often, and just got an even better digital camera, so I'm now dangerous. Pages are taking forever to download, so I've got to work on the site.

But if I can figure it out, I want to start a garden burb, but I'm pretty clueless so far. Soon though!

http://alfred.therichards.org/ojblog/gardenblog/index.html

Lisa

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2001

The back yard has been completely tilled under, and I finally started planting vegetables yesterday. Our last frost isn't until May 25th, and the weather here is pretty unpredictable, so I don't want to plant the more fragile things like cucumbers until I'm sure they'll survive.

I've planted some perennials along the house - hosta, lily of the valley, and bleeding heart. The daylilies in the front yard haven't died yet. There's sedum growing in the front bed. The rose is even starting to show signs of life. Spring must be coming to the tundra. ;)

Today I think I'll translant the morning glory next to the fence. My husband grew up on the coast and is horrified that I'm "planting WEEDS." ;) I've assured him that the vines won't live through the winter, and that they probably won't be able to re-seed themselves. Of course, if they DO reseed I'll be ecstatic.

Ack - and the dandilions are doing just fine, thank you. =P

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Oh I hope you're not sorry you asked! The gardening bug has bitten me and I never would have believed it. I used to go outside only to take out the trash. Now I come inside only when the sun goes down.

I have always had lots of tropical plants indoors and a few pots of herbs and flowers outside on the porches. About two years ago I began reading about perennial gardening, old roses, buying books, watching HGTV, and thought to myself, "hey, I bet I could do that too!". I had lived in my house for 20 years with no landscaping except for nandina bushes, a few irises, and a rose bush that survived somehow in the Texas heat with no special care.

Well. Last Spring I dug my first garden. The soil was packed into clay. I learned a lot from the books and Beth's "double-digging" and garden journal, and added peat moss, compost, and cow manure. I took a week of vacation and did nothing but work on that garden, and it turned out lovely. It is my white garden and goes across the back of the house and lies under my bedroom and bathroom windows. It is planted with old roses, Sombreuil and Iceburg, a gardenia bush, Shasta daisies, white irises, nicotiana, lambs ear, dusty miller, white casablanca lilies and for ground cover white alyssum and impatiens. It literally glows in the dark! I will add a dwarf white crape myrtle when I can find one.

Then, I couldn't stop. I dug another garden behind my screened in back porch, about 15' x 4' (where the original Red Masterpiece (J&P) rose resided, and planted three more tea rose bushes, an old rose, Celine Brunner, dianthus, yellow and white daisies, lobelia, lilies, tulips, alyssum, sedum, and a few cannas. I ran out of space and started going around the corner (shady) with hostas, several types of ferns and caladiums and a small pond with a fountain (my Mother's day present from my daughter - installed!!) and I will add water plants and fish very, very soon, as well as keep digging borders all around the lawn. So far my dogs have stayed out of the gardens.

On my lunch hour today I went and purchased a compost bin. Is there a 12-step program for this addiction?

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Beth, as you know you are a big fat enabler when it comes to roses. Because of your recommendation of Michael's Roses I am now the proud owner of five roses I don't have room for! I will be forced to come to grips with the oxalis which has taken over every inch of space the baby's tears hasn't. I have six bags of cow poop to work into the soil, and half a bag of peat moss to add into the mixture. Because I ordered roses last week from Chamblee's I finally got off my butt and bought a wheelbarrow in preparation for digging up the yard. Now all I need are overalls.

The salvia, heuchera, astilbe and lavender are doing really well right now, along with the clematis which is slowly winding itself around my back stair railing. It's a "Niobe" which looks scarlet in all the photos but is in reality a very rich magenta which looks handsome against my yellow house.

On the downside, the plumbago isn't very happy, nor the brachycome, and I confess myself baffled. The rhodie has persistent aphids no matter how much soapy water I spray on it. I want to scream.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Aphid predators were really slow to show up in my garden this year, but they're finally here. I just read that sweet alyssum attracts a lot of aphid predators ... most of mine petered out last year, so it looks like it's time to plant some more. It overwinters here, so that must be why I usually have so many good predatory beasts to take care of the aphids.

I just bought a Niobe clematis as well, even though clematis doesn't do very well here. I just couldn't resist it.

I am always happy when I can enable someone into buying roses for which they have no room, because it makes me feel better about my own little problem.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

We just moved in to a brand new house, so we have nothing but dirt and rocks. I'm trying first to get some grass started, so the dirt will stay where it belongs (outside!). We also have a very small, very steep front yard that needs something FAST before it becomes property of the street. I'm trying to do the garden planning sensibly, and not do everything at once, but I keep coming home with cars full of plants. There's no rule that says anything has to match anything right? I just about have one of each! (except Columbines, which I love).

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

I have a ton of room (343 acres to be precise) but still, I shouldn't keep buying roses. But I found some called "sub-zero" and they are hardy to -35 degrees, so how can I not keep buying them? I've bought 10 so far, and I keep seeing places for them. Climbers all along the deck ... stop me, please!

Lisa

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

Lisa, I have a city lot, and I have over 40 roses. And some of them are Austins (which get huge here) or climbers, and one of them is a Lady Banks rose, which could easily eat my house. And that doesn't count all the trees or the wisteria or the entire half of my yard that's too shady for roses. So I think you have room for at least a thousand roses!

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

Honey, Beth says I can have a thousand roses, and see, I only bought 10 more! And look, I got a ground cover one and another climber and they're all hardy to 40 below this time. Yay!

I think he'll buy it.

Lisa

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2001

Update: They *were* only root hairs! YAY! The jalapenos still haven't sprouted so I moved them to the sunnier window, and have concluded that their first window definitely qualifies as shady, south side of the house or no (may have something to do with the BIG TREE right outside). So I shall start some forget-me-nots.

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2001

I agree with Beth-- Bluestone has excellent plants. They are definitely the way to go if you like perennials. The plants I got from them last year are vibrant and healthy and they've all at least quadrupled in size. The ones I received this spring are taking off (except for a couple of lupines -- I think the rabbits got to those).

My garden is doing quite well. The backyard is a challenge, though, because I have a destructive yellow lab. I keep trying to plant shrubbery underneath my dogwoods, but he invariably pees on it and kills it.

I do have some thriving pepper plants. I mix these in with my flowers because I think that the foliage and peppers are kind of pretty, too.

Two of these are habanero pepper plants. I would like to test the resulting peppers out on my brother in law, but my husband says that would be mean. We'll have to find some habanero recipes, I guess!

Odyssey Road

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001

I've got a garden burb started for garden journals for those of that don't read Three Way Action where I announced it to begin with.
Come join me so I don't feel so all alonesome. I'm trying VERY hard to ignore all of this damn rose talk going on everywhere. Excuse me while I stick my head back into my bucket of sand. I don't have time for roses right now.

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2001

I just became a Michaels Roses victim. I can't wait until they arrive!

Cathy

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

I planted my fist vegetable garden this year. On my balcony in a kid's swimming pool. Ended up yanking out about 1/2 of what I planted because I'd planted way, way too much for just that small pool. (Gave the extras to a guy a work - suprizingly good way to flirt by the way.)

Used to be my only vice was the bookstore. Now its the bookstore and the gardening store. (Worse yet are gardening books! The horror.)

My first veggies are coming in right now and I'll thrilled. I've got petunias. I've got a rosemary tree (from christmas - though I'm having a devil of a time keeping the the thing alive.) I've got hostas and ivy (planted in old cowboy boots) and tons of caladiums and dianthus and shasta daisies and bachelor's buttons and... (and bunch of other stuff I don't remember the name of)

Any idea though of how to keep my cat out of the vegetable garden. I don't mind him laying in it, but the other things he does gross me out.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001