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Updated
January 27, 2002 |
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| Quotes
to Remember |
Recent Articles | Photos from the garden's 1st year | |||
| Earth
laughs in flowers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Gardens are a form of autobiography. ~Sydney Eddison You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt. ~Author Unknown Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise. ~Michael P. Garafalo, gardendigest.com The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow. ~Author Unknown Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~Kahlil Gibran I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings |
Finding
Design and Purpose in a Corner Garden (continued) by Lisa Hegel Because we were so near the end of Fall when we moved, there wasn't much time to plant more than a few token perennials, such as a Rhododendron and Butterfly Bush from our prior location. We filled in with a few hardy Mums in front, and planted some bare root forsythia and other tiny shrubs and trees from the Arbor Day Foundation (10 free flowering shrubs and trees for a $10 membership!). Believe me, this is NOT the way to go, unless you want to wait several years to appreciate them. Had we moved in Spring, this might have turned out differently, but as it happened, we have two Forsythia, one Smoke Bush (which until the Fall of 2002 was just a stick with a hat!) and a French Lilac which have done well. Everything else unfortunately, died off. Once the fence was up in mid-November, I could anticipate Spring and all the planting we wanted to do. More important, I wanted to create a haven for butterflies, birds and any other wildlife which happened upon us. The area around us is "suffering" urban sprawl. I now realize that the coyote and pheasants we saw last fall who all but disappeared, as well as the hawks and eagles we have currently, eventually move on to where the hunting is better, in the best case scenario. Concentrating on the smaller critters, I've had some successes, and I keep learning about what beneficial insects and butterflies are attracted to. This past Summer, our butterfly bushes (see one above), have furnished black swallowtails, red admirals, monarchs and other types of butterflies with some of the nectar they feed on. I grew fennel and curly-leaf parsley as host plants for their larvae. Here's a list of flowers that have proved to be magnets for the butterflies in 2001:
I will be sure to find and plant more this coming Spring. Ongoing planning and designing in my dreams is what occupies me this Winter. I'm planning purchases of several new rose bushes, a small flowering shrub or two and a few new Hostas, enlarging our water garden, and using the Toad House I received for Christmas in one of the garden areas in back.Design and purpose are easy if one has unlimited funds, space and ideal climate. My little corner of the world is challenging, but the rewards are worth it! More to come....  |
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