Maybe over the course of twenty to thirty years a more civilized garden could evolve from my editing. I have no real intent to push it in that direction though.
But, there is a big BUT, I am beginning to see that as the under garden emerges from a summer in hiding that it is indeed possible for me to have a designed and civilized garden for at least four months of the year.
The definition of civilized is critical here. To me it means that a certain level of maintenance is evident and that there is a coherent design in the garden that provides structure and interest. It does not mean a landscape.
I have been planting my way to the slope below the cozy cabin being a low mounding tapestry of texture and color, almost an abstract painting of sorts. It needs a bit more to carry it through the winter and to complete a coherent design.
The maintenance part is simple. It just means cutting down the Tall Flower Meadow once it is dead and done to reveal the garden below, at the beginning of winter.
It is this evergreen structure of the under garden that will be my civilized for four to five months during the barren time.
Those bent grass stalks make my maintenance gardener self twitch. I need to get in there soon to tidy up the front roadside bed. The remaining grasses and the evergreens will be my structure and interest for the winter, a modicum of civilized in the wilderness.
I have stone structure. I have the beginnings of evergreen plant structure. The design theme is in my mind's eye. It just needs more. Some of that will come from growth. Some will come from more planting.
I can have a civilized garden in the winter time. Just don't be expecting anything that looks like a landscape.
Posts
4 comments:
I think you are taking the right approach to your massive garden. Enjoy it.
"A civilized garden" is emerging, clearly. Your patient care in selecting the candidates to populate the garden of interest in the quiet phase will be richly rewarded. For now, the gawkers will have to content themselves in the visuals of tidy rows of well-tended dung.
Lisa I already have plans for expansion. One more reason to let nature have a big say in things.
Barry those tidy rows of curated dung are an eye catcher and so different from the plowed vegetable gardens of pale yellow dirt the gawkers see down in the valley.
Oh wow! Your garden is huge. The master task of gardening such land would be a daunting prospect for most people, which I think makes you amazing. Like all craft and art, I believe gardening is a reflection of the artist's, or in this case, the gardener's soul. It doesn't have to be picture perfect from the beginnig, but it is a masterpiece in the making. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and the pictures! Wishing you all the best!
Mitchell Knapp @ Scenic Landscaping
Post a Comment