Friday, June 17, 2011

Dirty Hands

When we moved to P-town, I was happy to have found a home in a fairly new neighbourhood with some old trees out back. While I've been told that the previous owners were enthusiastic gardeners, they also had four boys, three dogs and a divorce to plan. The back garden, therefore, had the look of an incomplete thought. Six trees line the back fence, the last vestiges of what was once the property line between two farms. The land beneath them was wood-chipped in one area and sparcely covered with decorative rock in another. The north fence line was planted with day lilies, peonies and dreadful prairie grasses. (When plants send you running for an inhaler, they quickly lose their appeal.) The south side was cleared, bricked in for planting, but bare. A blank pallet! To some this would come as a Godsend, but to a novice gardener like myself, it feels tantamount to being handed a length of rope tied in the shape of a noose. It's taken me a few years to come up with a sustainable idea for the area. As you can see from the following pictures, the plants are still babies, but try to imagine them two years from now,  when they will be about two to three feet taller and filled out with new growth. I've enough space left to plant some pretty annuals, should I ever be able to rise from the couch. 

A combination of purple and gold burberry interspersed with dwarf honeysuckle line the south fence line.


A line of yellow-green and variegated hostas get a little late day sun beneath the trees. 

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