Chapter 1: Making of a Garden Chapter 2: Flower Growing 101

Chaper 1: MAKING OF A GARDEN

"What did they get this time?" I yelled to Jon, arms full of sleeping bags and cooler, unloading the car from our return camping/ reunion trip up north. He made it into the garden first. We saw a mamma and baby deer hop lightly over the fence and hightail it around the corner. "Roses, tomatoes",....he started, doing the inventory. Drat! My first real year growing flowers and the deer had come to dinner. We thought we had deer-proofed, but evidently not. I didn't know prior to this season how much deer love roses- and a lot of other garden delights.

 

















Prior to this year, I didn't grow roses- or hardly any flowers. People sometimes ask me if I've  grown the flowers in my bouquets and all I can say is "I wish!". While my garden  contributes  interesting foliage to the bouquets, I'm sadly lacking cutting garden quantities of flowers. Truth is, it has sorely been lacking any flowers. How did that happen?

When we moved into the house as renters almost 20 years ago, it came with a yard full of really awkward garden decisions that fulfilled the desires of prior renters who wanted to get their hands in the soil. The original owners built this bungalow/duplex in 1915. They were an Italian family who stomped grapes where I now have my studio. They had the desire for shade where we wanted sun, and gravel where we wanted soil. When we showed up, fences were falling down, trees were in strange places  and we wanted a curved path where there was a straight one - not to mention a very healthy crop of Bermuda grass sprouting up from any place there was soil.

Our landlord eventually sold the house to us, just when we were on the verge of buying a condo with no yard. Yay, we were in! We made a to scale sketch of the property and started planning big changes. No weekend makeovers for us. As a compulsive DIY couple, my husband and I are really loath to turn over anything to someone else so consequently the evolution of our garden has taken years and lots of self help books that graduated into U-Tube videos. 

Those years were devoted to the infrastructure of gates, fences, paths and planting trees and shrubs.We now have a very private space in a fairly dense urban area. There is seasonal interest with foliage and large flowering shrubs. I'm not so unhappy with this still evolving garden, but as many gardeners will lament, they want many gardens: 

The farmey looking one for food and chickens
A flower cutting garden with rows of seasonal blooms
An outdoor living room with a comfortable/ magazine spread seating area
A flexible work area 

And Flowers!  The flourish, icing on the cake- aka, summer blooming flowers was missing.

Floret Farms to the rescue!
To be continued......