Help! I moved into my new home just 10 months ago and the garden (or what usedto be a garden) is a mess! There are what appears to be two hydrangea bushes in between two (I'm told) dormant peach trees. I would like to get started on the garden but because I don't know how I don't know where to start. the grass is full of weeds, the tulips barely bloomed and there are atleast seven different varieties of flowers growng in my yard. can someone help me sort this mess out I want to save my yard!
WHERE TO START
Welcome Wendy. Sounds overwhelming! You will NOT be able to do everything at once. You must decide how much time, effort and $$ you will be able to invest. Then go at things one at a time - one area at a time, etc. Better to do one area completely than many areas just a little. Also, decide what's worth keeping vs. what you will scrap. Post some pics if you can. Good luck!
Victor
Wendy,
What area of Baltimore do you live in? There is a very active Forum in this area. Check out "Mid Atlantic Gardening" under the Regional Forums. It is a bunch of lovely, active, informed people. All willing to help you out--no matter what. I live in Perry Hall--near White Marsh Mall. Be glad to help you out with anything I feel qualified to.
I have been gardening forever, but just reading Victor's advice made my mind relax a bit. This time of year my mind is running ragged with all I have to do. I still want to do EVERYTHING at once, but my body and my knees pace all I do. Also my senior age....
" Then go at things one at a time - one area at a time, etc. Better to do one area completely than many areas just a little. " Very good advice!
It is hard to "inherit" an unkempt garden. I think if you let it slide for a year, and keep good notes of everything that grows in it and find out what it is (or is not) you will be better prepared for next Spring. You can mark the spots with sprinklings of chalk or flour so you know where things are. You can buy a pack of bamboo stakes and cut them up in shorter sections and stick them in the ground around things and label the spot. Talk to your neighbors. Go to your local Nursery and ask a god zillion questions. Plant people LOVE to talk! If you are not sure of what something is, pull up a piece of it, or break off a leaf of it and take it to your closest Garden Center. Seek and you shall find!!!
AND--you know that this lovely community of Daves garden will help you out no matter what. Keep checking all the Forums.
Gita
I read a book once about starting a new garden--can't remember the name, but it had some good advice. First year, plan where you want trees and shrubs and plant them. Fill in with annuals for some color. Second year, start perennials, but keep doing annuals. By third year you should have bones of garden started and can work on extras like paths, arbors, etc. Inevitably, when I moved into a new house I ignored this and consequently have had to move things around quite a bit, but its a nice theory.
Good suggestions Don. The first thing I did when I moved was map out my yard & measured the hours of sun in each area as well as wet spots. It helped me to decide where I wanted to put new gardens as well as where to place plants in the gardens. It also made me realize that the plants I yearned for and the plants I needed where different.
Dave
Dave,
You sound like an engineer. What you were describing is something my Ex would have done--IF he was a gardener. He wasn't. He was a civil engineer, though. All about elevations, water tables, floods and the like. I thank him forever for choosing the high ground my house sits on. Never any water problems.
People approach planning things in different ways. Some go with the heart---some go with the mind--some just "GO"--and some go with "statistics"....ha...haa..
I have never had to move. Been here 38 years. Before that, we lived in a second floor apartment of a row house. NO gardening!
Gita
A piece of advice that I read on DG seems to apply here. Someone with a huge job wondered where to start and the reply was, "How do you eat an elephant?". The response was, "One bite at a time".
Don't even think of tackling everything at once. Gitagal gave good advice - listen to it and decide what your priorities are. Is it the entrance, a patio area or another spot. Focus on one at a time, as Victor said. Take photos so you'll know when plants bloom and get identification for anything you need. DG has an I.D. forum that helps many people.
No one
ever has it
" all together"
That's like
trying to eat
"once and
for all."
author- Marilyn Grey
Personally, still working on it after 40 years with the same house.
Isn't that part of the fun of gardening?
My experience was that 1) I had no idea I would get so into gardening, 2) I inherited a number of mature plants, 3) my tastes / preferences are always changing, 4) money and time never seem to be available simultaneously, 5) unexpected things (like needing to remove your primary shade tree) throw a monkey wrench into everything and 6) gardening brings out the obsessive - compulsive, manic-depressive, neurotic, irrational shadow person you never knew was there.
Your last sentence, Victor, describes so many of us.
Scary thought, isn't it??
Could be worse.
That seems to apply to many of us gardeners, too. We start with one project, head off to get a tool and see another area that requires immediate intervention and then decide to buy plants to fill in a gap.............and so it goes. Some days are better than others and we see more rewards for time spent in the garden.
Victor - you nailed it! Especially #4 "money and time never seem to be available simultaneously," - we are finally getting ahead an itsy bit, so I can buy the odd perennial and rose bush - but I am running out of time to get the beds prepared etc.
Gita, My sun/shade map of my last 2 yards is the only systematic thing I do in gardening. I think 2 moves in 6 years made it meaningful.
My job is kinda the total opposite of engineers. I work in the world of feelings not numbers (I'm a therapist)
I buy plants w/o knowing where I'll put them, I keep starting new gardens before I finish old ones, I'm never fully weeded or mulched, I've never given serious thought to color combinations, and I have never brought new seedling to where they are ready to plant w/o losing track of what at least a few of them were.
Oh, I forgot. My 1 anal gardening area: deadheading!
Geez, Dave--we just became soul mates!!!!!! Are you ADD person as well? Sounds like it from your description on your gardening.
What kind of a Therapist are you? I have loved psychology and human dynamics all my life. I analyze everything! I look at everything through that "filter". Unfortunately, I never got a job in it, but I did do volunteer work as a Group facilitator for 12 years. I just do not have the credentials to do any of it as a real job. Just an AA from a Community College.
Then again--aren't all therapist a bit on the anal side???? Or--the scattered-mind types? Luckily, gardening is pretty forgiving.
I AM a bit anal about my garden, but not about plants. They are NOT "living things" in the sense of pets and people. If a plant is dying--or has died, out it goes. I am not going to spend money and my time nurturing a twig to see if it will come back to life. NOPE! Plants are replaceable. And....deadheading has a lot of purpose. It is also a wonderful " daily stroll through the garden activity" coffee mug (or anything else) in hand.
Great to banter here on differing aspects of gardening and life.
Gita
Dave - you really brightened my day! We seem to have many of the same things in common regarding gardening except that I'm way too color conscious and agonize over color decisions. Deadheading is definitely OC area for me.
Gitagal - Regarding therapists being "scatter-brained" - I am so thankful for the wonderful therapist I had for two years who helped me through a very difficult time. I'm sorry if you ran into the scatter-brained types but they occur in all fields, I'm sure.
I don't nurse hopeless plants either. There are too many plants that would be happy here so any plant that wants to sulk can do their sulking in the compost pile.
Don't you hate when you walk through a garden center and every plants yells out, "Pick me, Pick Me." Never mind that, how about when you get to the check out and your $38.00 over what you planned on spending. Its like trying to figure out which of your children you should give back. Oh well, the mortgage payment can wait another week!.
Chuck
I get upset when I find too many that I want with the same habits or the same color. It forces me to go to another nursery and then just one more........
Right now I probably have about 1000 seedlings on my front porch, I have 150 baby impatiens (spelled it right again :-) ) in my office - AND I have 8 roses arriving, plus lots of perennials. My poor DH is going to be shaking his head in bewilderment.
Still have to buy about 50 white wax begonias for the mini hedge around the semi-circle garden .
Meanwhile, it feels like I have spent my kid's inheritance on potting soil and seed starter (which I buy at Wal-mart. I don't dare go near a real nursery! LOL)
Gita,I have a Master's Degree in Counseling Psych. and my license. Most of my work has been with families and youth. While I still see a few clients my job involves a lot of supervisory and admin responsiblities these days. We do a lot of community work and prevention programs in addition to therapy.
I am not ADD but I have some of that impatient impulsiveness, particularly when I garden. Some of my favorite people in the world are ADD though.
Pirl, Thank you! And I'm glad you had a good one. As a whole, I really like the people in my line of work but there are a few that scare me.
Seandor, If your plants are going to live outside (in or out of pots), you can save money by using top soil instead of potting soil.
You're probably correct Dave47, but I have so few vices and indulgences! try to have good potting soil for my containers. the topsoil I have here is pretty sandy and I have learned through experience that plants do much better in potting soil.
My favorite soils are all the Miracle Gro products. I LOVE the MG Potting Mix. Use it on all my houseplants and mix it in with MG garden soil for containers.
I would never use top soil in any containers. Too dense and no drainage. I cannot believe it when I see people at HD buying that junky top soil in those bags and they are going to put it in pots. I always try to talk then out of it.
Dave--impulsiveness in gardening is OK with me! Dead heading is NOT an OCD. It is a necessary thing so you can enjoy more bloom longer. It is also good "therapy" for the soul. An early morning walk through the dew of the garden can do wonders to start your day right.
A friend once gave me a small head pillow. On it is embroidered: "Gardening Tills the Soul". Amen!
Gita
Gardening for these last 2+ years has saved my sanity and soothed my soul. I, too, can hardly wait to walk the garden every morning......there I can commune with God and thank Him for allowing me to participate in his miracles of plants. MG soil has become a necessity. Especially with clay soil and caliche rock only about 2-3 feet down.
If I may be so bold as to share a poem I just wrote with you all. Of course, it is to my Garden and about my Garden. I have my "moments" of creative thinking. I think this is just wonderful!
Does anyone know of some place where on can enter a Poem for a competition or for possible publishing? I really think this turned out good. Because of this, I started a new Post on the Mid Atlantic Gardening called "Garden Poetry" . Seems there are not too many people in the category of:
"I'm a Poet--and don't know it".
Anyway--here is my Poem.
SEASONS
(Gita Veskimets-- April, 2007)
The Garden wakes--
It's breast heaves slowly.
With all its dormant strength
it takes a breath
and blows away the remnants of Winter.
And it feels renewed.
The Garden wakes--
It sighs at all yet to be done
and hopes of glorious things to come.
It drinks in the dew in the morning
and the rain of the night.
And its thirst is quenched.
The Garden wakes--
It wipes the sleep from its eyes
and is blinded
by all the glory and the color
that laid beneath the earth so long.
And it revels in things well done.
The Garden gives--
unselfishly--of all the bounty it has cradled
in it's loving arms;
And at days end
It rolls itself up in the green, green grass
And it rests.
The Garden sighs--
the burden now heavy on it's chest.
It gasps for cool air
and thirsts for refreshing rains and soothing nights
that now come so seldom--
and it tires of the effort.
The Garden struts--
Its wondrous wardrobe of the Fall,
Lovingly embroidered with the colors of the setting Sun.
and feels that it was a job well done.
And before the golden yarns unravel from its cape,
It lays its head on the soft, fallen leaves
The Garden sleeps.
Gita
INSPIRED!
Gita, I don't know where you could enter it, but you should definitely look into it. that is absoulutely wonderful! I'm sure you could have it published.
(note the spelling error above..was going to correct it, but decided to leave as is...)
jan
Our new poet floreate!
Great poem!
I'm for any poem that mentions breasts! Seriously, very nice, Gita.