Specialty Gardening: White Flower Garden/ Anyone Have One? Or suggestions?, 3 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
Hi Evelyn,

I have been a Master Gardener for five years now. I had the bones laid for the garden of my first house and had basic landscaping put in. It was in full sun with a very high ph (7.9). I learned a lot about the mistakes landscapers make, mostly planting plants with a low ph in high ph soil (so they become chlorotic), planting things too closely together (so that one plant dies), planting trees delivered in wire bags without removing the wires the wires out into the ground (they sucker over time and many die), and planting things at the incorrect depth (I lost six of seven viburnums trilobums because they rotted). I then took charge.

I started out reading, reading, reading. And planted tons of stuff. I started going out of state for my plants since I lived 40 miles from the Wisconsin border, and found I liked plants that were different (they were also 20% cheaper and if they planted trees for me the Illinois sales tax was waived). Then I moved to my current home, where the ph is fairly neutral and I have 40% shade. And where the previous owners of 20 years had planted almost nothing (which is a real blessing) but put leaf mulch everywhere. So I got to design essentially from scratch. People liked what they saw and started asking me to design their gardens. I am on my third one. I love finding out what people like, what their needs are and what their dreams for their gardens are. Because I don\'t have a relationship with a nursery I might order a rose from Colorado or a plant from Washington or what have you. I like the approach of bringing some to my garden (which is sort of three gardens in one) and asking what they like, instead of imposing upon them the same plants everyone else has. And often, if they really like something I have (geranium \'Bevan\'s Variety is a big hit) I simply dig it up and take it to their gardens.

I have been doing it since 2012, and designing and maintaining gardens is the biggest blast imaginable. I can\'t believe people pay me to do it.

Here is a shot of a portion of my first garden. Everything to the right of the grasses is actually the easement. I asked if I could grow stuff on it and they said yes, so.....

The second picture is of my parkway about 3 years ago. My community is very cool about letting you take over the parkway if it looks good.

So I took it over. The last three are from last year. I filled it with roses and peonies and perennials, including grasses.