How old is your garden?

As a newbie to the 'in the ground' gardening, I've often been frustrated that my yard doesn't hurry up and look like some of y'alls. Then, on occassion, I realize that some of your yards are a lifetime's work of love. Would we all be interested in posting a good 'overall' pic of your yard and comment on how long you have been working to get it to this level of beauty? I thought it might be a good topic of conversation, plus we'd have a pic of everyone's yard in one thread! :)

ecobioangie... Just imagine how lengthy the thread would be if we ALL posted a pic of our gardens, LOL!

This is the fifth summer of working on my garden, and it is finally looking like I want it... just in time to sell it. It has many changes over the years, always expanding... and Thanks to all I am learning from DG, it is also growing better.

This is one shot taken in May before any of the perennials bloomed.

Thank you for participating darius! Your yard looks so orderly. :P Mine is a mess. I have no 'plan'. I just buy one of these and one of those and in they go! I'll post a pic or too later tonight. My yard is 1 year old this month. :)
I do hope we have the worlds longest thread. It'll be great! We could do one a year.

Angie, my yard was a disorderly mess for most of the first 3 years, and I kept moving plants everywhere. Since I didn't start with a 'plan' it was just what I bought that I liked, planted willy-nilly.

Once I could afford some foundation shrubs, it started to come together. Should have done that in the first place, LOL.

Don't worry Angie, that your garden looks like the birds just dropped stuff on the way past, within a couple of months it will be up and running.
I'm pretty new as well to the garden game, and although my place is now 2 years old, and is entirely in flower beds in a wee yard, I've packed so many flowers into it that there is always something in bloom almost every month of the year.
I've had my ups and downs here too, and quite a few losses, but carried on regardless and now I'm happy as a parrot.
Click on the hyperlink to see how mine looked 2 years ago, and last year at this time.

Good luck & happy gardening


Wintermoor
http://davesgarden.com/contest/2002/landscape/viewbyuser.php?user=Wintermoor

Mine came with five pittiful little boxwoods staggered in front of the porch and a Cleyera on each corner of the house. I left the boxwoods even though I redug the whole bed simply because I can't stand to kill/throw out anything. *eyeroll* I shouldn't have. They bore me to death. The cleyera are BEAUTIFUL, but I've seen how huge they get and that WILL be a problem at some point. Stupid, stupid builders.

Angie, I took over my yard from a woman who had had 50 years to do strange things to and before her, a family that loved roses had had it for the previous 50 years. It sounds like a wonderland, but it was in reality a yard with thousands of daffodils planted in rows in the grass, roses put out in an old rock pile, beds that had been taken over by raspberries and goldenrod. I'm still struggling in big bits of the yard to undo what 30 years of mostly neglect has left, but boy, do I have some neat plants! We put in 3 rock beds in the side yard starting abuyt 7 years ago and they have changed and evolved into three very separate spaces.

This message was edited Thursday, Jul 10th 3:02 PM

wintermoor, what a great job you did with that samll space. It looks wonderful, by day or lighted at night!

Ok, here's the pic!

Great place Kathleen, and you look so young and pretty :-D

The stones are great, they spread a real adventure/nature garden feel. You must have a ton of work there, but I love that kind of place,in fact I love all sort of gardens, but the style of yours suits me best.


Wintermoor

Kathleen I agreee with w'more... stones just seem to add a certain look and feel to a garden, especially larger ones... a sense of permanence, perhaps?

Really nice both wintermoor and kathleen. I love the lights wintermoor! And kathleen, how long have YOU been working on it? That stone wall is impressive, does it really hold the dirt back?

LOL, thank you Barry, just subtract about 46 years and there I am!

The wall holds EVERYTHING back, Angie. We were fortunate enough to find a small quarry on the farm. Some of the rocks are from there and some from old foundations for buildings that no longer exist. The farm grows rocks, and Stan always brings me back the best ones.

Darius, as far as I'm concerned, the rocks are there to stay. Stan and a very enthusiastic young man who worked for us for a couple of summers during college breaks put that in when the weather wasn't suitable for haying. I think it was more fun for them than the gardening is for me, and you all know how much I love my gardens - and my little garden angel, when she'll stand still!

Some beautiful gardens in this thread!

Ours is an utter mess but here's one border last year http://davesgarden.com/t/298101/. The photo below is of the border this year. It's taken less than 18 months to achieve a riot.

As it happens, we didn't cheat and over plant the border, even the Nicotiana is a self seeder from last year, most are from the 20 or so plant we put in last year and a whole bunch of volunteer seedlings. When I find my camera (eeek!) I'll take a front view photo.

Kathleen, It is that beautiful "sweetpea" in the middle of the garden that caught my eye. A keeper for sure.

This is the 3rd year in my garden & Greenwood's Hostas..The 1st two years wasn't too good. This year I received a lot of nice plants from a garden swap & picked up some on a trip down to South Florida so things have improved. I lovingly call it my jungle now. My Lantana is kinda getting out of hand but I hate to cut it back as I like the wild sprawling look & it keeps down weeds too. We have had lots of rain & the garden seems to really like that except for the Zinnias. We have put in a lot of hard work this year..put down mulch too. It is paying off.
my garden..
http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid2308832

DH's (Greenwood)Hostas
http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid2330632

This is our 2nd year. When we moved in it was a former 3.5 acre cow pasture that had been "raked" leaving it void of anything including trees, grass, etc. Nothing but hard pan clay with weeds. We garden it by ourselves with just our trucks hauling free manure where we can find it. Plant as many trees as we can afford to buy even though they're barely twigs. I'm impatient; DH is patient. It's a good combination as we both have a vision but projects get split up into what "can be" within 6 months and what "can be" within 5 years. Keeps us laughing and busy!

Dea yours sound a little what I started with.. guess mine was better though. It was the parking lot for all the cars ..trucks & even tractor. We started With a small wood rail fence to keep the cars out then had to add a wire fence to keep the chickens out (it works).. We did amending too. The lasagna beds helped. Still needs a lot of work. We make compost also. Now I need to get rid of more grass in the rest of the yard*LOL*

here is one...
due to my place being open to the public, I need to keep it tidy and simple... plus i constantly have people walking around in my gardens, so I stuck to border-type gardens.

This way I can display the plants, etc etc without alot of hastly.
here is one pic

drew

here is another

for the most part I'm into container growing....
here is a picture of one of my Pelargonium greenhouses, its 30ft by 100ft...
can you believe this mess is open to the public!!! most people can't get in, I really need to fire the guy doing maintainance :P

later,
Drew

Angie, I've been living in the same place for 13 years now (granted, things grow slowly up north here!) -- there wasn't a cultivated plant to be found when we moved into this cedar swamp! We've cut down trees (too near the house and we have 12 acres, no loss) and filled in and planted! Things are still not ideal, but looking pretty good - just remember, getting there is at least half the fun!
>>Sandy

Wintermoor, your garden is lovely - you accomplished so much in such a short time! In your July 31st, 2002 picture there are two tall, feathery lavender blooms in the foreground. What plant is that?

Thank you NoH20,
the feathery blloms are Astilbe ... have a look at the link below and you'll see more :-D

http://images.google.de/images?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=astilbe&sa=N&tab=wi&meta=


Wintermoor

Thanks, Wintermoor. I have a number of astilbe myself but I have never seen any that lavender color. Very pretty.

I have lived in my current house for four years. When we moved in, there were lots of beds - but they were full of iris and thorny bushes. The first year, we moved all the iris to new sunny beds (we moved over 5,000 rhizomes!), and I started to plant new things. The second year, DH ripped all the thorny bushes out - - as we were tired of digging splinters out of our hands.

However, without a real plan in mind, I found myself with a disorganized mess - - colorful, but messy. So for the last two years, we have been extending beds, enriching soil, and relocating most plants. It is still a work in process, real "granny style" flowers that hope to evolve into cottage style beds.

With all of our trees, it is impossible to capture a photo that shows the full landscape. So, the attached photo is just a glimpse of how my beds look. Nat

Oh well, here's one more picture that was taken about a month ago. As you can see, I also love container gardening, and have containers and hanging baskets EVERYWHERE.

I moved to this place 8 years ago June 14. There was nothing here except various native grasses, and sagebrush. The manufactured house was moved in in April of 1994, but because of my hip joint surgeries, etc. I didn't sleep here until June 14. I did plant 3 or 4 trees earlier. The first picture is of the bank along my private driveway. The redwood fence was installed about 5 years ago. The deer were eating everything. Donna

This photo is of my pools. They were dug by the fellow who works for me when he can and when I can afford it. They were built by he and I in 1995. Donna

This one is where the dirt from the pools was piled and made a berm. The problem is it is a constant problem to keep everything from outgrowing its space. Donna

I am sorry I really goofed. Photo No 2 above/below is of the berm built on the dirt removed for the pools. No 3 is of the new woodland garden at the back of the yard. i will try to bring up the photo of the pools Donna

WOW!!! rutholive, Nathalynn, Deeproots and BAA,

the inventiveness is incredible and I want to be like that too, so please send me a wee bottle of whatever you drink in the morning ;-)

Amazing places folks!!!


Wintermoor

i drink about 100 oz of really strong coffee as fast as possible...

hope that helps.
drew

rutholive - give me 5 years and a man that will build me that and I'll be a happy gardener :)

echobioangie, I am so glad you started this thread. It is great to see how much everyone has accomplished. Wintermoor, so much in such a small place, great. Nathalyn, Deeproots and and the rest, i hope you all send more pictures. Donna

:) We need more responders though!

My "garden" was started in 1969 by my dad when they bought the land. He did all the work until a few years ago when I started to take over from him. Now I do almost all of the garden work while he mows the grass -- what little there is left.

He is the one who instructed the builder to leave 50 trees on the property. The land had never been cleared, it was primary woodland forest. Grass sod was installed, but only survived in the back a couple years, with all the trees, so 6 English ivy plants were installed. I have been ripping it out the last few years (horrible stuff), and replacing it with less voracious groundcovers and gardens.

It is impossible to get a comprehensive photo of our gardens, so I will show a few, like others have done. This first one shows part of the backyard in winter, so you get an idea of the trees.

*sigh* I know you get sick of it, but I wish we could have real snow in winter. All we get is dead brown and depressing. lol

shut yo mouth girl! once a year is just right! love the pictures of snow, but don't want it more than 2-3 days tops.

roflol!

p.s. tiG did you get my email? If not don't worry, it was just a question and I have my answer now. All is well. :)