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So this is my garden…

When we first moved in to the house – over twenty years ago, there was some very interesting landscaping. The front of the house had almost nothing. The back was… well, slightly inexplicable.

The most unusual feature was a giant aucuba bush in the middle of the back yard. Well not quite smack in the center, but close. We couldn’t figure out why anyone would plant something like that there, but after only  a few weeks we realized not only did it provide a lot of extra privacy, it created some very interesting garden zones. You can just see it behind the weeping cherry we added to this circle a year or two later.

In fact, the entire yard had very good ‘bones’ so to speak, with some very inspired tree and shrub placements. There were also some obvious – and very interesting additions… The result (once we removed the worst of the misplaced plantings)  was a variety of garden spaces – garden rooms as they are sometimes called.

Some of the least understandable were the three very large pink tea roses, also in the middle of the yard. Like, just in the lawn. These things were almost six feet tall, clustered in front of the aucuba as if they might have framed a big banquet table. In fact we had many a family party seated at a 6 foot table there in the early days. Before the children came and we needed the lawn to be rose free for safety. Those things have monster thorns.

In addition, the side yard lawn hosted a chain of hostas – each plant about three feet in diameter, going right down the middle.

I don’t have a picture of those but they started just beyond the aucuba and went all the way to the fence (which we added). This is another view of the aucuba from the back bench perspective. (You can see the path I wore into the grass with the laps I did around the house during the pandemic in this picture).

But possibly my favorite part of the yard is the Secret Garden. So called because when we first got the house it was March and there was nothing there but some scraggly grass and few holly trees about 10 feet from the side of the house. But low and behold as the spring developed – perennials started popping up out of the soil – and presto-chango the Secret Garden was discovered.

Here it is many years later after we added the arbor and the fence. It all fit so perfectly that I had the feeling we were really recreating what had been there years ago. The couple we purchased the house from were elderly – and the house was built in 1927.

So the first thing that started to appear were day lilies, quickly followed by lilies of the valley and phlox. I have discovered the lady of the house loved blue and orange flowers. They are all over the property. I love that her legacy lives on here in flowers. Most have been moved – including the roses and the hostas – but they’re all still here and provide the backbone of my garden.

Originally I thought I would show a progression of blooms – each area as it develops, spring to fall – but I think I will save that for next year. This year I will do a tribute to Mrs. C’s garden and show how her raw material provided the foundation of my garden. Which is doing just wonderfully – and it only took me 22 years…

The Secret Garden

To be continued…

Of Plants