I am slowly making improvements to the gardens around the house.
When we first moved in, we pulled out many scraggly, struggling shrubs from the front, and so were left with lots of empty space, punctuated with clusters of trilliums and lily-of-the-valley amongst other shade loving woodland plants. I am slowly filling those spaces primarily with hostas and ferns, with some foxgloves (if they decide to grow) and bleeding hearts.
One of the side gardens is essentially wild, and will remain so for another year or two. I like it, though. The grassy areas surrounding it are filled with forget-me-nots at this time of year and my husband leaves the grass uncut for me. I love looking out my kitchen window at the cloud of blue.
I am okay with some of the gardens going a little wild- my favourite type of garden is what I would describe as controlled naturalization. I want plants that will grow well in the conditions that exist, and I want to see very little bare ground. I decide what will go where and plan for the height and spread of different plants, but after that I want them to just do their thing. Organized chaos. I've never been a fan of overly manicured gardens, and I especially think they look strange out in the woods.
We are lucky to have some well-established peonies and lilacs in every shade around the other side of the house. The peonies are in part shade right now, though, and would likely do much better if we moved them.
The sun garden farther up the lawn had been kept tidy, as has the smaller side garden. That's as far as I will get this year.
There is still so much work to be done outside, but a little bit at a time is going to have to do for now.
