Garden progression pics

10 years ago

Spent all weekend gardening, and haven't quite adjusted to the fact that the work week's started, so heck, why not post some photos of our hard work over the years?

These pictures are taken from the top of the upstairs screened porch for maximum view, so pardon the tree fluff that blows our way yearly in late May.

The garden we inherited has about nine huge green Erromena you can see on the lower left. The summer we moved in (2010), my in-laws helped expand the beds and gave us divisions of their Albomarginata. Having killed many an indoor plant, I was a bit scared to garden. My in-laws assured me that if the Albos could survive a long car trip from MI to NY, they would survive in our garden.

The summer of 2011 was the year we battled weeds--by hand!--in our lawn.

The spring of 2012 we wised up and decided to begin converting our lawn into garden. This involved some leveling out of the west and north parts of our yard, which sloped downwards. You can see we started to plot everything out with some of our neighbor's spare bricks.

Here is our garden this summer:

And an unobstructed view from ground level:

Thanks for looking!

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Comments (5)

coll_123
10 years ago
It looks really wonderful! And it looks like you still have room to play a game of croquet- nice!!
jan_on zone 5b
10 years ago
What beautiful gardens! All those aching backs weren't for naught were they? I bet that screened porch gets lots of use now that the view is so spectacular. Good job.
Jan
User
10 years ago
WW, that is a great progression and easy to see the structure of your garden from the beginning.

To take a page from Phil's book, down at the low end of the garden, put something like a bench to sit down and view the garden from the low point, up the hill toward your home. It would be a good spot to have a huge vase or Sinbad the Sailor jar too, as a reference point. You have such a great large space, so well done, unless you told on yourself, no one could tell you are new to gardening. Looks like a pro to me!
Way to go!
irawon
10 years ago
I'm impressed. Loved seeing the progress over the years.
weekendweeder
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for such kind comments.

coll, before we gardened we played many a game of badminton on that lawn! Now most of our weekends are (happily, for me, at least) spent working outdoors, though my husband seems to think that next summer we might be able "just to enjoy" the garden. (HA!)

Jan, that screened porch sadly doesn't get much use. The only piece of furniture we have there is a rickety old wicker rocking chair that came with the house. (Our furniture budget keeps going into the garden!) My mother in law likes to have her morning coffee there, though. And we stand up there to "survey the estate" in the mornings.

moc, we did want to place a garden bench down there in the shade, but I'm afraid most of the real estate is taken up by hosta now. Though maybe while the bigger hosta are maturing, I have some space. OR I could move some of the smaller greenies and Albos that I planted as a weed barrier by the neighbor's yard. Hm...