Three cheers for the well-established garden.
Not well-planned, mind you.
Just, sort of, well-established.
I was thinking about that as I slaved away, prepping the garden beds for a brand new season. Man! I'm outta shape. Muscles squawking mightily this morning. I'd intended to clean up one, maybe two, areas but I got in a groove and just kept on going.
Plus, I wanted to stay ahead of the weather. Spring doesn't really happen in the mountains. We vacillate between summer and winter, and back again, quite often in the same, darn day.
I lack that gene, commonly known as self-control, so my yard is home to 11 different flower patches, the first of which was planted in the summer of 2003. (AKA, the 'well-established' one.)
But, right now, they're just separate, sunny flower beds. (Mild-mannered enough that you don't need a macho guide.)
The oldest garden is the last place I visit and the longest place I linger. Not so much to admire. Mostly to catch my breath.
In spring, I'm so exhausted by the time I reach that flower patch, it's nice to just plop down and inspect the perennials peaking out of the muddy soil.
These perennials are so big and bossy, that after 7 summers, they are super self-sufficient. Making life easy as pie for lazy little me.
Mostly because they're packed in like sardines.
I know... I know... I should thin them out a bit. But, I highly doubt that's gonna happen. I'm likin' this dense pack. It's so crowded in there, most weeds don't stand a chance.
* My dense pack flowers are just tiny green shoots this early in the season. Bulbs are squeezed into what little soil is left in these over-crowded gardens. They keep things colorful while the long-blooming perennials wake up and start growing.
19 comments:
Ahhhhh I can smell your blooms from here! You're ahead of me, who hopes to have daffodils in a week or two and hyacinths...sometime! It's been a long winter!
Hi, Jodi!
It's the micro-climates. I still have 3 feet of snow on the zone 5 side of the house. :)
I have crocus finished blooming, daffodils in bud and tulips still coming. But I love the idea of a packed garden, no matter how it happened. So lush and full, beautiful, plants like to cosy up to each other:)
Big beautiful flowers. They do not seem to mind their close conditions.
Gorgeous close-ups. Too dense for weeds, that sounds like a good tactic.
Oooh, pretty spring flowers, Kate!
I love your packed in flowers. Beauty in the snow.
These are so lovely. I can see why this is your favorite area of your garden.
My hyacinths are just finishing up. For the first time ever, I added three new bulbs to the pack (many different kinds of bulbs came with the house). It was so fun to see more colors this year!
Now just waiting on the tulips...
I'm really fascinated by those great yello flowers. They are lovely!!!I'm sure that you feel totally energized every time you wath them.
Kate, I know what you mean my taking advantage of the seldom good weather days. I worked my tail off last Wednesday and still didn't finish all the weeding and pruning that needed to be done. My back finally screamed "ENOUGH!" Happy to see you're having spring blooms!
It was lovely to see your beautiful flowers, you have such color in your garden.
I am a big fan of densely planted gardens, and less weeding. Plants are sociable creatures, and they love to mix and mingle.
Jen @ Muddy Boot Dreams
I could get excited about the densely packed beds. I'm all for any garden that looks pretty without requiring any weeding work!
Hi Kate, even if they are dense they surely have very lovely colors: yellows and violets. How i wish we can grow those hyacinths here, but we can't, it's too hot here! You should send off some of your cold temps here, to alleviate our sweats and hotheadedness! BTW, thanks for saying you like how i write, i wonder if my writing is good or whatever, you didn't say! haha.
I like dense packs, and absolutely love your double daffodils. They are gorgeous!
What gorgeous daffodils, Kate! I hope they make you forget about the snow underneath them. I'm a dense-packing gardener, too. Working up the soil to create a new flowerbed is the hardest work, so I just tend to stick a new plant in any tiny bare spot I can find in the already established beds. I've got some hostas and ferns that are wishing those tulips would stop blooming so they have room to stand up:)
Hyacints have always fascinated me. I love their color!
Kate, you may not want to head to the Tulip Festival for a least another week. The pictures I posted were from two years ago. My husband and I went on April 16th this year and we were sadly disappointed. There were very few tulips in bloom because of the cooler spring we've been having. I brought my camera thinking I would be taking more photos of tulips. I ended up posting pics I took 2 years ago. We were joking that we should be given a "bounce back" pass and call it the Daffodil Festival, and in a couple weeks go back to see the tulips!
Thanks for the hot tip, Ramona!
Since the weather has been so iffy, I'm glad to hear we're not missing out on the best blooms. :D
Lovely! I didn't realize there was a self control gene...guess I missed out too and can stop blaming myself!
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