"Wild" garden vs. tidy gardens which do you prefer

I love both but my own garden is more on the wild side. I plant what is on sale that summer then everything grows bigger than it is supposed to. Plus I just am not able to do all the garden chores that are needed. What about you?

like this!!!

Mobi...it's a JUNGLE out there, lol. I suspect we garden alike. I am 7-8 yrs into my garden and have no patience to wait for things to grow into their own. I admire those out there who have the vision and patience to wait. One advantage to my way of gardening is that I sure find out pretty quickly what will survive our summers here in 'hotlanta'. The way things are growning and as I keep on diggin and pruning....my full sun areas will be ready for shade gardens in about 5 yrs or so :-). Until that time I could be out there on a full time basis and still have stuff to do. I do prefer the funky overgrown look to neat and manicured. I am currently visiting my son and family here in the SanFrancisco area for about 10 days...dangerous territory for me...I have been nursery hopping and have a small collection going on here...clothes go back UPS...plants in the suitcase~!
Notmartha (love your DG name)..your yard is absolutely stunning !! Thank you so much for sharing your picture. I have always admired the cottage garden look and the way these gardens always have something blooming.
carole in atlanta

LOL, you can tame gardens??????????? I was just yesterday telling a friend not to expect Better Homes and Gardens when she gets here.

I have actually had tidy gardens, for about 10 minutes when we first built them, then we started putting in the plants. . . A friend at church says I have "Janet Disease." Janet is his mother, now elderly, but still trying to grow things just because she might be able to, and still letting things grow in her garden just because they will. It does make a bit of work for him, but she and I have been able to exchange some old plants that others have given the heave ho.

Dori, we could put our gardens together and have a even bigger hairier one!

I love cottage gardens! Notmartha, yours is fabulous (and you have so many beautiful pictures throughout the forums)! How long have you been gardening at that location? I long for a garden space very similar to your picture, but don't know if I'll ever make it!

Mobi -- although I try to tidy things up a bit from time to time, I'd say my basic preference is more on the "wild side"!

Notmartha, I love your garden. That is exactly what I mean! My MIL has a very pretty tidy garden but then she never grows anything invasive or many of the other plants I do. Catmint would be too all over for her but I love it (my cats do too). I stay away from plants that require too much coddling. My philosophy is "If it dies, then it has no business being here!". That way I don't feel so bad when plants die. I just discovered blue eyed grass. People may not like it because it looks like overgrown grass but the blue floweres are so pretty.

I like both. Tidy in the spring when everything is just set out and the lawn is cut and trimmed and everything is in its place. Kinda like when your done cleaning the house before company comes over! Wild later in the season when the plants take over and it's way too hot to be fussing. I just let the garden do it's thing come August. Over here it seems that everything reaches its peak for about 3 weeks in August and then the die-off slowly begins. You wait all this time for the full glory of your plants and then poof...the end!

I would like not to see any dirt, just flowers. I guess that means I'm a wild gardener. When I see an empty spot I start looking for something to put in it.
Notmartha, what a beautiful garden,

Vizz8,
I am like you. I don't like seeing soil or mulch.
My yard/garden is on "The Wild Side." At least most of the places in my yard.
The front by the road is more tidy because I want to see out on the road. I am hard-of-hearing so am very visual.
But the rest of the yard, I cramp all my favorite plants in everywhere I can find.
Yes, Notmartha. Your yard is so pretty. I wished I had that much land to take over with plants!
Carol

Such a nice garden Carol.

Viv

Vizz8 how did you get that effect on your picture?

Thanks, Vizz8. You are near my old town, Seattle. Hehe.
Yes, I am assuming you used some kind of lens to make the picture like that?
Carol

Wild wild wild wild and more wild! Sorry no pics - but a little of everything everywhere.. and rooms, walls built out of shrubs and all.... wild.

flower/vegetable/fruit/herb garden combined. Not in a planned sort of way with the red chard near the roses, more a sort of wild collision of broccoli w/ poppys. I like it, at least, but nobody else seems to lol. The blueberries look pretty near foxgloves!!! I agree w/ everybody. Wild is the way to go!!!! (though I might have taken that a little to far)
Beautiful gardens everyone!!!
Zelda

The effect is called fisheye, and its on the kodak camera program. It certainly was not me, I'm not that talented.... ;)

Viv

In theory I like "tidy." In reality, I often get "wild." If you don't believe me check out the "before" pictures I posted in a Curb Appeal thread ;o) But then again, that bed is now back under control. At least until it gets a few years of growth on it.

As someone once said - always remember that Mother Nature "bats last". Very true - at some point our garden will be in its final inning and "she" will be the last to bat, so the final score will undoubtedly be in "her" favor.

Notmartha, your gardens look wonderful!

So glad to see beautiful gardens that look like mine! I started off liking the neatness and putting things in assymetrical order. Then things reseeded and took the stress off of me of trying to make it look "natural". lol

I enlarged my back bed again this year, so the front part of it looks so bare! I don't like bare spots either, but I have to say I'm impressed with myself for leaving space between some things this year. Actually I think it's because I know I'm going to have to move some other things.


Here's one view of mine. (I wish the color looked better!)

Konkreteblond,
You wish the color looked better? I can't imagine why! I think your yard looks beautiful! I have seen other pictures of your yard and I have really admire it. I would love to have your yard!
Carol

Oh, thank you Carol! I just am not satisfied with the pictures. It doesn't seem to capture the true brightness of the colors in certain light. (seems to be sunlight, lol)

One of my three mantras is "My garden is a work in progress so live with it". Jessamine

I'll voice the minority view and vote "tidy"!!
This is my little corner of the world and I want it the way I want it. If it is too wild I can't relax when I sit outside- all I see is weeds and jobs that need to be done.
Plants have to behave- if they cannot they are so outta here!

I love the idea of huge mounds of plants separated by a mulch river with ample room to walk between and gardens that sprawl....but I also live on a 1/4 acre lot and can't be wasting valuable plant money on mulch. LOL I think I would have to refer to myself as a *crammer* that has to have one of everything. I don't have to have each plant forever but I want to at least try everything once. I would have to say my garden is cottage style. I love a variety of color, texture and heighth and honestly I plant for me. I can never get photos of the garden to look like they do in person, not even in different lighting. I see every little weed out there that should be pulled but when people walk by or drive by, they slow down or stop to throw out a few compliments. I think it is only because of the variety of plants and maybe they can't tell the difference between the flowers and the weeds. Oh, to be so innocent! LOL Then again, I was doing a window box a week or so ago and saw two ladies go by, walking dogs. One said something I could not quite hear and I heard the other say "Yeah but with a garden like this, once it is all planted you have nothing to do.". HUH? WHAT?? Darn, I forgot to sit down and eat bonbons! LOL Does she think my garden stops at the side gate?? I think I'll invite her to the back yard some day if she leaves the great dane at home. :)

I would like a garden that 'looks' wild...but has an underlying theme or thread or some kind of design integrity...'it looks casual but it's not'...is this making any sense at all?! ;-)

...sometimes these are the hardest to create, I think. I know I'm no good at it...I keep getting off the track, or clashing plant form, color, bloom times...whatever....

I guess this is what they mean when they say a good garden can take years to create...

I'm reading "Breaking Ground" by Page Dickey which features many gardens that appeal to me... http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1885183372/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-3743617-3500708#reader-page

Happy gardening this weekend...t.

(jumping in) - I like a little of both. The front of the house and the beds by the driveway I like to keep tidy and controlled. In the back beds, anything goes, and the more "crammed" the better. I'm constantly digging something out, moving things from here to there, and I can't drive by a garden center without being tempted to get just one more plant.

Badseed: My neighbor told me once that it must be nice to have such pretty beds without a lot of work. She only sees the front, which pretty much takes are of itself. The back is where all the work is. Her dog is a little foofy thing that poops in my yard - darn good thing she doesn't have a great dane.

Breaking Ground is a great book.

This bed used to be all shade until this spring when my sweety, Skip, cut out a couple of damaged tree limbs. My pulmonarias shrived, and I had to make a sun spot in shade garden. Dirt spot at the front of this was just planted last week with campanula, delphinium belladonna, and veronica sunny border blue. They're itty bitty little babies, but they'll be nice when they fill in.

konkreteblond, is this more of what you had in mind for your photo? (I adjusted the lightness and the contrast.)

Very nice, darius! I fix mine if I print them, but otherwise I usually leave them as is

Oh yes Darius, that looks much better! I guess I should have thought of doing that! LOL I just think my camera should do all that by itself tho. Thank you! I'll save this one.

What type of program did you use to do it? The software that came with my camera isn't great. To resize anything I have to use Irfnview, but I can't crop with that one.

wow I am so impressed by all these pictures. I work so hard and have all these ideas burning in my brain.................so that is what is wrong with my brain!!!!!

Hi koncrete--love your garden and all the combinations...(where's your milkweed and the butterflies, though?!!)

Also, you might like 'Picasa 2' for photo editing...It's a free download from Google...pretty simple and does all the basic editing, cropping and fine tuning...

konkreteblond, I use Graphic Converter ($19.95) for touching up my photos, although the main reason I have it is for converting image formats. http://www.graphic-converter.net/

I cannot even imagine how would one defend "tidy" gardens! The grounds of my garden are "tidy", i.e. I keep my tools, containers and compost bags out of sight, but the plants are, of course, running wild and making me unspeakably happy with their mix of folliage and colors.

The funny thing is that even the most uptight gardeners still seem to think that nature is running wild in their flower beds! One day I was talking to a neighbour of mine. She the kind of gardener that has it all simetrically designed, the grounds mulched to perfection and she somehow manages to make all zinnias grow the same height and seemegly with the same number of leaves!:) In the conversation I told her that, although I love informal gardens, I very much appreciate the effort that goes into maintaining a formal garden. She looked at me and said, "Who wants formal gardens? They're so boring!".

By the way, great pictures!

Paige, Photoshop is good for stuff like that because it does all (scale image, crop image, add color, touch up, etc, but it's expensive. A program that is comparable to Photoshop is Gimp. It is open source software like firefox, mozilla, and linux so it is free. We just usually make a small donation to the particular software foundations when downloading these type of programs, because it's a plus to donate $10 and have it be tax deductible instead of paying $10 for a for-profit program.

Like Photoshop - it does not automatically compress (though most free programs do). It takes a little getting used to and playing with because it's not super simple, but I hate the way the program that came with my camera (Arcsoft) and others compress the photos.

http://www.gimp.org/windows/

Enigel, how funny! Mikey

Enigel, if you manage to get all the bags, soil and tools put away, you are doing so much better than I am. LOL I am happy to get the plants in the ground! I always need dirt for something and most often that comes in a bag. If you need dirt, you need some type of tool to either put it in with or stir it around. By the time I call it quits and put the tools away, it is time to get them back out so I can dig up all the stuff that is not hardy. Sigh...

I am so glad my tools don't rust in the rain, then I would be in real trouble!

Thanks for all the photo tips! I'll check them out, since they all seem to be within my budget (free to $20)

I have both. My front beds are tidy (er), as are a couple of the back yard beds.....but I also have an area of wildflowers mixed with perennials that take on the wild meadow look. Both types of beds seem to work under certain circumstances.....at least for me. :-)

This message was edited Jun 13, 2005 8:59 PM

tabasco, you can see see some of the milkweed from this angle. (orange and red blooms) It's running a close race with the red salvia and the zinnias. No Monarchs yet for me tho, not until a little later. I have seen a Queen lately tho. :)

ah, yes, k., I see it now!

No monarchs for me yet this spring, but I keep wishing...even though my milkweed is blooming and I think it looks pretty--thought it would look very 'weedy' and send my garden into the very 'wild' category. Not so. Just medium 'wild'/messy/casual.

Now just watching for butterflies...

Happy gardening. t.

Koncreteblond, what a great garden, sooooo pretty. I am waiting for my butterfly weed to bloom. I grew it from seed last year and hoped it made it through the winter.