The next several years

Like most gardeners, once I got started, the gardens just kind of kept getting bigger... One success turned out to be the result of just being stubborn and not giving up. We have, as I've mentioned, huge lilacs in our back yard. We tried for years to get something to grow under them, and never had much luck. Eventually, we got some hostas and they went great guns. But they weren't enough - there was still too much empty space between them and where we could get grass to grow. Impatiens were OK, but not great. What to do?

Well, the answer turned out to be the Friends School Plant Sale. I found out about this at my old job. The Friends (Quakers) School uses this as their huge fundraiser every Mother's Day weekend. The sale covers 90,000 square feet at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand building, with 2300 different kinds of plants, and 300,000 actual plants! Most are quite inexpensive, and certainly less than comparable ones at nurseries (yes, they're smaller, too - think I mentioned that already). Anyway, 5 or 6 years ago I dug through their 50-60 page catalog and found shade loving perennials and stuck some under the lilacs. It took a few years, but now it looks pretty good. My definition of success in this situation means that something grows there besides weeds that looks OK! Another place in the yard that needs little care. (Now I volunteer at the sale and get in the pre-sale. It's far less crowded than the general sale and I get what I want!)

I wish I could say the same about the front wall gardens. In 2004, we had two retaining walls put in and got rid of our awful south facing hill. Nothing grew there - not even weeds. It was so steep and so hot that water ran right off. We decided something had to change as it made the whole house look shabby. In one day the contractor pulled out the old steps, dug out the hill, put in two sets of walls as well as steps and backfilled everything. It would have taken us all summer and would never have looked so good. I tell you, it was worth every penny! We had trucks and bulldozers and all kinds of stuff lined up on the whole block - pretty amazing.

We did the planting in the next few days to save at least a bit of cash. It all started great, with the exception of one kind of plant. We wanted easy care bushes, so the contractor recommended barberry and nearly wild roses. OK - we went with it. They claimed the roses needed essentially no care.

Well, they have different ideas of "no care" than I do! Every year they've had something - black spot for several years, then sawfly larvae the last two. The latter makes almost every leaf drop off! It's too bad, because they're beautiful when they're healthy. I finally resorted to using chemicals on them this year - black spot takes a spraying every 10 days. I don't like doing it, but it's either that or pull them out. Grrr. We put snapdragons in between the bushes, as we love them, and they volunteer every year. What a nice surprise. We don't need to fill in between the barberries anymore - they're too big to need it.

Two years ago I put bulbs in with the roses. They add a nice springtime touch until the roses get going. The whole thing is such an improvement over the old hill, and I don't have to worry about Joe cutting off fingers or toes anymore trying to mow the hill! He also noticed a huge drop in the amount of gas needed to mow - far more than can be accounted for by the decrease in lawn. Doing that hill was so hard on the mower it just sucked down gas.

And now he needs to mow even less!