My Garden, part 1

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Here's a view through the woodland garden at ground level. This photo was taken a week ago.

POSTED BY CALEB – I find it intensely irritating to read other people’s writing about their gardens when I have no idea what their gardens are like.  For that reason, I’m going to tell you a little bit about my garden before I start blogging about my latest plant excitements and disappointments. 

I live way out in the country, over ninety minutes south of St. Louis, on sixty-six acres of hilly fields and woods along with my parents (two), my brothers and sisters (nine), our cats (seven), and our chickens (thirteen).  Our garden is composed of many smaller areas which I’m going to divide into four posts.  Today, we’ll take a look at the woodland garden.

Hilding the cat with phlox stolonifera and hostas

Our woods have the typical blend of trees found in southeast Missouri: oaks, maples and juniper laced in spring with flowering dogwoods and redbuds.  Beneath the trees grow clumps of pale cardamine and wild geranium, fragrant blue phlox, ferny gold corydalis, maroon trilliums, and dainty clumps of wild wood violets.

More phlox - our native wildling - with hellebores and hostas

After several years of gardening in the sun, we decided it would be nice to have a garden bed where we could plant delicate, shade-loving things without fear of them burning up in the sun.  So we cleared a patch of ground along edge of the woods behind our house, mulched it heavily, and began planting.

Here's a full view of the woodland garden. Not a beauty shot, but now you know what it really looks like.

The woodland garden has gone through many changes.  It is now three times the size of our original bed.  Many odd and unusual plants (some I wouldn’t have known about five years ago) grow there.  We have something in bloom from Janury (snowdrops) through to October, sometimes November.

Just to give you a clue of what's going on in the wild in my area. With fields of flowers like this, gardens have some stiff competition!

You’ll be hearing alot about the woodland garden, as it’s my biggest planting project this spring.  I plan to head off to college this fall, so the high-maintenance sunny borders are being simplified.  But since woodland plants tend to be self-sustaining, I know that this area will continue to look gorgeous even when I’m away from home.

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