Photos of My Garden

I live in an attached house with a small city lot. For a while my husband, Mike, and I owned both sides, of the building and my elderly aunt lived in the house next door. I incorporated the garden next door into my gardening realm. Now my daughter and son-in-law , Kirk. live in the house next to us. I still do some gardening there, but little by little my son-in-law is expanding his gardening skills.

All of us take photos but Mike's and Kirk's are really wonderful. It is their pictures that I have used on this site and in my gardenng talks.

Early in the 90's I had the turf taken off the front. It has been trial by error planting the front but I'd never go back to a lawn. Paths and patches of plants are much more interesting.

Because no lawn was such a treat at the front, we soon took the turf off our side at the back. The yard other side was kept pretty conventional for quite a while in case we wanted to sell the house at some point. Little by little, however, the turf is disappearing from that yard,too!

This is my 7th year of gardening naturally. I use no synthetic fertilizers nor any pesticides. The first year was a bit rough but since then my garden has had no major insect problems. I do get weeds but I work on them by hand. In the flagstones, I use boiling vinegar to control weed growth. On the bit of turf left next door and on the bit left on the boulevard, I use corn gluten meal in spring.

And, of course, as I age my standards lower so I don't freak out if I have a "weed" or two. In fact, I like clover in the lawn. It stays greeen all summer!

Some Plants I Love

These photos are of some of the plants I have grown in my garden. Actually it would be more correct to say that the photos are of flowers I've grown in the garden. Plants are really hard to photograph -- busy backgrounds keep getting in the way.

I often say that I am a plant collector, not a gardener. To parapharase Mae West: "Between two plants, I always choose the one I haven't grown before." Consequently, the plants in my garden are constantly changing. "Bin there, dun that, out you go!"

Except of course for some plants that I have become particularly attached to or plants that have become particularly attached to me. For example, Sanguisorba (burnet): I've dug it out twice but it keeps coming back! Or my lovely New Zealand carex, Carex buchanii, that self-seeds in the oddest places.