from cornfield to controlled(?) chaos
Every year I feel like May is a mad rush of too many things to do in too little time. Every year I feel like I could be making better use of my gardening time outside of May. But I never do. So this year I’m trying something different.
With a large lot like ours, planting only around the edges isn't an option. In the front yard we added four island beds for multi-season interest, using primarily shrubs.
One area of the yard where I didn’t worry about multi-seasonal appeal is the flowering corner. My husband and I both like lilacs but when they’re not blooming they can be boring to downright ugly. So we planted a large informal lilac screen in a far corner of the front yard, along with some other flowering shrubs and trees. It’s beautiful in the spring and generally forgettable otherwise.
As is usually the case, I accomplished far less than I planned to. We were more consistent with maintenance this year, and continue to tweak things to make maintenance easier.
We don't have any pretty photos of fruits or vegetables, so please enjoy this fox in our compost bin. Foxes have been occasional visitors since we moved in. This was one of two that spent a few days at our compost pile.
We combined the garden shed that we needed for storage with an herb garden. The inspiration for the herb garden was a traditional English herb garden built around formal geometric beds with gravel paths. But we don’t have an estate and a gardener (other than us) so we had to scale it back just a bit.
We knew we wanted some kind of water feature at our new house, we just didn’t know exactly what. We thought about a more formal fountain but ultimately went with a freeform pond with a waterfall. Despite very little going according to plan, it has the lush, woodland feel I was going for, so I’m happy with how it turned out.