There is Always Time For a New Beginning
This porch was built for my wife Patty so she could see her plants and watch her birds. Patty's avocation was to create a beautiful garden and tracking bird life that visited our backyard in Central New York. The purpose is to educate all of us about the natural beauty that surrounds us. The glass windowed porch enabled Patty, who suffered and died from Ovarian cancer, to continue to witness a garden a garden she nursed to life for 40 years. Today, her family and friends continue to give it life and beauty. Your thoughts and comments are welcomed. Write to me at Jbehrens13323@gmail.com.
Every gardener faces summer vacations, long trips somewhere and other diversions which leave your garden unattended for periods of time. In some cases, when the gardener returns to her carefully nurtured plot, bringing it back to normal is such an overwhelming task the garden is forgotten, abandoned really...for good. It happens.
Probably a better way is what my new gardener, Gert Middlebrook, my fiancé, decided to do with my late wife Patty’s large perennial garden. Gert found that the overgrowth of weeds was too much to deal with considering the time she had to garden so she began to focus on reducing the size, being selective about the flowers to keep and those to plant and the colors she wanted.
Working with landscaper Karl Elsenbeck she began the new plot. Neither one of us wanted Patty’s garden to go to ruin. She had spent more than 20 years cultivating a garden that offered a myriad of colors and plants to satisfy her feelings about creating beauty. And she was generous with help for neighbors who sought the same for their yards.
The challenge for Gert was to choose plants that complimented those already there, making sure all plants had the space necessary to grow and breathe and giving the larger, crowded patch a new look both pleasing to the eye and the scent.
A rose lover, Gert found a good number of baby roses being strangled by overgrowth and other plants simply because of the neglect. A week of no weeding can create chaos with plants. In our case, the garden had been left to erratic 15 minute weed pulling but no consistent plan for over two years. Perennials are supposed to need little care but every gardener knows that constant weeding, watering and fertilizing are still necessary to keep a plot blooming and alive.
When Gert and I talked about it, it was a matter of doing something now or leaving it go to seed and ruin.
“It’s not always possible to see the strangling of plants going on until you get down on the plant level---on your knees really---and note the intertwining of the vines. You don’t always see it looking down,” she said.
What is Gert using to accomplish her new garden plans? She’s introducing a number of new plants like Forever Summer Hydrangea Blue, twist and shout Hydrangea, Holly, roses, coral yellow and white.
Her purpose is to add more color and at the same time, bring about a more manageable garden which can be both attractive and not as large. Gert’s garden extends vertically about 100 feet into the backyard. Behind it is a 13 foot hedge of evergreens.
She smiles as she says she is inviting some of her “friends” from her garden in Burlington to the Clinton space. Concrete angels, Peter Rabbit, Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs to name a few. "It’s the whimsical side of me,” she explains. Gardening has to be fun...and if some Disney characters add amusement to her labor of love...so be it.
Let me know about your garden. Write me at Jbehrens13323@gmail.com.
