The back garden has been a huge project for me. I've never had to create a whole garden completely from the ground up before. Usually there's some reshaping and transplanting and general reinventing that needs to be done but I've literally planted this garden from scratch. A few of the plants were here already—like the cherry tree and the rhodies—but most of the yard was grass and weeds.
This garden plan shows where the garden is now. I dug out the shape of the bed and I've started filling it in with plants and rock and mulch but let me tell you, it is slow going. I've taken as many plants and cuttings from the front garden as I can so now I have to actually buy plants to fill in the rest.
The growing conditions are much different back here than they are in the front. The front gets about 10–12 hours of direct sun a day and the back varies from deep shade to dappled shade to morning sun to late sun to blinding sun. Finding the right plants has been tough, and finding the right free plants has been even tougher. But it's starting to come together, I think.
I don't know what compelled me to draw up this plan but I've always liked the aerial shots of gardens in magazines. I made it by measuring the backyard with a tape measure and making some rough estimates about the sizes and distances between plants; then drawing it to scale on my computer using a grid in InDesign. And now I have a handy dandy print-out when I start dreaming about what I want to do in my garden! It also reminds me of how much planting I have already done. Sometimes I forget about that part. I love in This Organic Life when Joan Dye Gussow says something like, 'We never see our gardens for what they are, we only see them for what they will become.' That's so true, isn't it? This season I want to appreciate this garden for what it is today, and stop waiting to love it until it becomes something else.
