Oh, my, how true! Scary, I'm now 70, I wonder what I'll think of my garden at 75, or 80, lol!! Many changes, I'm sure...

That's so funny- just the opposite happens to me. I look at photos from five years ago of plants I have ripped out and say to myself "what was I thinking?! Why did I get rid of that?"

Haha! Like "feathered hair" in the 70s, and then the Dorothy Hamill haircut. Perhaps that's equivalent to those pink miracle petunias or sweeps of bee balm.

But sometimes, like hosenemesis, I look at my photos and think - it looked so good then! Why did I ever change it? It's so crowded now!

In the real world I look at old photos and think "I was so thin!" Now I look at old garden photos and think "those plants were just scrawny!" At least in the garden it's nice when things bulk out :-)

A senior gentleman selling annuals in front of his house 18+ years ago suggested I plant New Guinea impatiens with dark blue lobelia & dusty miller in my shady window boxes. They were set on a low stone wall that circled a huge oak tree since I didn't have brackets for them under the windows. I've planted the same combination every year since, even after I moved to this house six years ago and no longer have a shady window box under a giant oak tree. Instead I have a huge planter on the driveway at the northeast corner of the garage that's mostly shaded. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and I enjoy that planter same as I did the original window box all those years ago. Sometimes the lobelia even keeps going right through the summer.

The garden beds are a totally different story and those get changed as I learn about, and grow, new-to-me perennials. This year, Persicaria virginiana Painter's Palette made its debut in four different beds while I decide where it looks & does best.

I didn't take pictures when I first moved here because there were only weeds, shrubs & lawn. Weeds & shrubs are gone but this is the first year the beds have been worthy of photographs so I took some to use as my baseline. I know going in they'll change as I learn more about design and graduate from just planting the tried-and-trues to trying new/different things.

It is a good thing to take pictures every year of the garden(s). I always swear I will remember the location/type of plants from year to year, but never do. Mother nature has a way of straightning out my mistakes by killing off or involuntarily replanting things (Ha!) but so far I never seem to remember that I am neither as strong or sturdy as my ambitions.

Since gardens always evolve, there are bound to be some "What was I thinking" areas. It is almost required to qualify for thinking outside the box. But I'll bet there also are some areas that get a "Now that was a good idea".

And so the garden moves through time.

tj

Yes, that would be unfair to just notice mistakes. However, at the time they seemed like a good idea, and I was in love with my garden then, as I am now. Like us, gardens evolve, mature, change, go through transformation - and this journey, this process is the essence of the entire experience, not the end result.