Here we are… the first post in a new season. It inspires me.
The first inspiration is to update my garden as well. For years I have renovated, and renovation is always somehow lacking. I want to return to some of the joy that comes from creating something new. My idea is to redo some of the gardens in a ways that identifies and places focal points inside the garden rooms, and indeed make more of a room from some of the gardens.
The entire place needs sprucing up, and I think adding more design and worrying less about weeds is the direction I want to take. This, of course, is secondary to my decision to concentrate on food gardening.
As always, my hope is to integrate the two, which is why I love ideals found in the French Potager and the English Kitchen Garden so intriguing. Somehow these types of garden combine beauty, landscape architecture, growing food for the table and a cutting garden all in one.
Focal Points In Food Gardens?
Why not? Although I have to admit that I am not sure how to do this. My plots have been in place a long time.
I already have raised beds in one and the other is placed against the back side of my garage with a stepping stone path along its side and backed with a fence. Maybe something against that fence as I look south?
Focal Points
Focal points are simply things that draw the eye and hold it. A centering of our attention. I have given concepts such as “full stops”, those plantings that allow the eye to realize the end of a flower bed, some thought in the past. (Mostly in the former border that I no longer have, it is given over to grass).
But focal points are not something that this landscape was easily given to… most of the paths and the driveway are somehow oblique in position. The photo with the urn is the one place I made a focal point. As one approaches the back of the house from the driveway.
I have a great deal of planning ahead of me if I am to make this inspiration into a reality.
The Challenge Of An Old Garden
When making new gardens, everything was much less challenging. Now I am stymied by the difficulty of moving established plants, and risking their loss. I am in need of fresh eyes for this place, too.
Perhaps I need time away in a vacation place to be able to return and truly see the improvements that need to be made. Yes! I love that idea. Not possible this year, so I need to crank up my mind’s eye to get a bead on what will give the gardens some renewed interest and form.
I find that I don’t plan to make major garden changes all at once, but I do constant tweaking. As time goes on, I find that more and more often I discard things that are low performers, and stick to fewer of the tried and true. Funny, it always seems to look better once I do this. Go figure.