Planning for the Future

Planning for the future of your garden can be a conscious process, but just as often is taking place subconsciously for months or even years before it becomes a conscious desire.

Every day that you spend in your garden you are making decisions, rather you recognize it or not. Sometimes you just look and perhaps enjoy the vista before you, but other days you might be energized to improve things and you suddenly rip out a plant that you’ve never liked or has lost its one time allure.  That’s OK.  You are the master designer!

Planning for the future of my garden has been gradually filling up my thoughts and recently its starting to take up more space so its time to explore what’s going on.

When we’re young, we think we’ll always be young and able to do whatever we dream of, but surprise, I no longer dream of having 5 acres of wild, exuberant garden.

Not only has my taste changed, so has my purse, and my energy level.  So actually, subconsciously, I have been planning for the future of my garden for a few years now.

What I picture now is a garden that is easy to take care of and looks good even if I don’t spend hours every day working in it! 

I still love looking at the pictures of gorgeous gardens in magazines, but it is unpractical for me to think my gardens could or would look like those.  This is true for a number of reasons, but mainly because my husband and I have very different ideas of what is beautiful. 

We live in a typical subdivision and my husband is a “Turf Guy” (which means he likes his unimpeded green grass).  He would never think that a whole yard of vegetation and garden would be pretty.  I get it, and even though I’m always eager to expand or completely create a new garden, I do know my limits, and I just can’t do everything my dreams suggest would be beautiful.

The fact is gardens take a lot of work-not just to create but to maintain.  My husband also

seems to think that every time I have a bright idea he has more work to do…a statement that has a lot of truth in it (unfortunately!)

So planning for the future of your garden sometimes includes compromise…and not just with a partner.  Sometimes we also need to compromise for the welfare of pets, or children and grandchildren and without even realizing it we are constantly adjusting the face and future of our garden to compromise with the other loves of our lives.

For the last few years I have been researching flowering shrubs and last year I actually bought a little lime hydrangea, a Rose of Sharon bush, a new hardy rose bush and a nine bark bush.

I am also fascinated with anything miniature, and I’ve got a small fairy garden and a small rock garden.  Now that I’m consciously planning for the future I want more miniature and small scale conifers to add to both the fairy garden and the rock garden.

I looked all summer for miniature and dwarf evergreens without a lot of luck either, but just last week I was thrilled to find several miniature conifers at an outside winter farmer’s market!                                    
It was serendipity! 

                     

It’s not the best time of year right now for planting anything in the garden. (The soil is frozen solid right now,) but I still found myself buying four miniature evergreens that are now competing for space with all my other plants that are overwintering in my house.

 I can already picture these beauties taking center stage in the rock garden and in my fairy garden in the spring.  It’s so exciting!

I’m also planning to reduce instead of enlarge the size of some of my gardens, and I want to do it with shrubs that are both hardy and add multi-seasonal interest to my gardens.  I’m presently using my wintertime to research flowering shrubs, shrubs that produce edible fruit for wildlife, and shrubs that grow slowly and have interesting shapes and colors.

It only makes sense that as we age, we don’t bend as well and it takes longer to recover from a hard day of work.  (Contrary to the ads on TV I really don’t have the energy I had years ago), and both my husband and I are and always have been active people. So to continue to try to maintain my massive, wild garden would just be an exercise in disappointment. 

I love blooming flowers and I love watching the spring flowers die back and the summer bloomers take their place, which again change when the fall beauties take center stage.  It took me years to create a garden that was in full bloom all throughout the summer.  I’m not planning on changing all that in one season.

Planning for the future of your garden can be a gradual change from one style to another.  My plan is to slowly replace from the corners in with more layers of blooming shrubs to replace older not as vibrant perennials.  My plan isn’t cast in stone, but I know that as the small shrubs that I bought this year grow they will take up more space and less space will naturally be left for other higher intensive plants. 

My Little Lime Hydrangea-It's so cute! I just love it!

The things that I will gradually be replacing are any tender perennials that have to be dug up every fall, stored and replanted every spring.  So I already know that part of my planning for the future means no more gladiolas, dahlias, or giant cannas. 

I want more native plants, more shrubs that have interesting shapes and colors to attract the eye through several seasons, and less everyday intensive work deadheading and weeding.

So step two of planning for the future will removing aggressive plants that need dividing every couple of years to keep them healthy (and in check).  Plants like peonies and rosebushes need much less dividing than some of my day lilies.  So even though I currently love my day lilies I can already see a day when they no longer grace my garden. 

(I’ll get my day lily fix by visiting public gardens and doing garden tours during the growing season.)

I have never been able to resist new plants and new varieties.  I don’t even know the number of different plants I have in my garden, but I know that I’ve got to rein it in a little.  To be honest, I don’t know how to deal with this tendency to fall in love with every plant I see.  I truly believe I can always find one more place for a plant that I just have to bring home.

That philosophy worked for me for years, but I noticed this summer that I actually have used up all the available space in my garden.  So sometimes I deal with my urge to buy something new by staying away from the garden centers.  (This tactic would work better if I wasn’t also trying to write a gardening blog for you!!!)

So planning for the future of my garden also involves limiting the variety of plants that I buy.  My designing background tells me that I should have more of fewer plants, and I’m actively trying to get my emotions around that. But being practical hasn’t always been my strong suit!  So I might be taking baby steps for awhile!  (Did you notice how strong I was about buying new varieties when I saw the miniature conifers last week?) Yeah, me too!

My mom would occasionally say to me “Do as I say, and not as I do!”  Good advice, gardeners.  I know what I’m talking about…I just don’t always do it!

So planning for the future of your garden might mean thinking about your own garden weaknesses and working to overcome them. 

Have you started planning for next year’s garden yet?  What changes do you want to make? What are you researching?  These cold winter nights are perfect for curling up with a plant catalog and a few daydreams for the future.

Thanks as always for reading Julie's Garden Journal.