In a nutshell - 2014

With the year coming to a close I find myself looking through the photos I've taken this past year. Although I haven't been posting, it doesn't mean I haven't been gardening. Those of you who know me will recognize that the location of my garden has changed again. This time I think I'm really home.

The gardens here are quite different than anything I've worked with before. It's by far the smallest property I've worked with which actually turns out to be quite difficult. In the past I had a large empty piece of property to develop. The yards here were overgrown and quite shady. Luckily Andy
encourages me to make changes.

The existing beds still need quite a bit of work, this one is filled with the common ditch daylily. I've learned not to rip anything out until I'm ready to replant the area.

My first focal point was this small garden along the front porch. It gets afternoon sun, just enough to support most perennials. I'm trying hard to stick with a cottage garden theme.

This small area was already planted with a few perennials and bulbs. Although I thinned them out I tried to keep what I liked. I'm not sure but I think these are scilla, if you know better please let me know.

By June the plants filled in well enough. Maybe it's silly but I have the hardest time buying plants that I used to give away. These all grew in such abundance in my other gardens, I'm looking forward to having enough plants that I can trade some for other varieties. The Ladies Mantle (Alchemilla Mollis) was a must have for me.

The next bed was the one inside the front fence. This is another key location as we see it when we sit on the front porch and walk out the door. It's also visible to the many walkers that fill this neighborhood. It will take another year before I have this filled the way I like. Andy replaced the globe light with a nice lantern just last week, it makes a huge difference.

In front of the picket fence along the street is a stretch that is just covered with pebbles. In a moment of genius I realized I had a spot to grow my succulents. While they'd like a little more light, they did quite well in this location. I was thrilled that nobody tried to help themselves to anything here.

The last garden which was the only one we planted in 2013 too is the small vegetable bed. We had tomatoes, eggplants and peppers here. The peppers did the best but we loved the eggplant so much that we want to plant more next year. The fence won't make it through another year so there'll be a new one before we plant our next crop.

Over the next few months I'll break these gardens down a bit. It looks like Melanie's Old Country Garden has become a cottage garden. Hope you don't mind!

melanie