Gardening with Anne

I’m not a very serious gardener, but I love it more each year.  I love watching things come back in the spring bigger and stronger than the year before.  Sometimes, I mourn the loss of a friend from last year, like the bright yellow columbines that just didn’t show up this year!  But then a red one suddenly appeared, although I’m sure I didn’t plant it last year.  

I’m no Martha Stewart, but I have accumulated some things that work for me:

• Wear comfy, stretchy and dirt-friendly clothes.  Click here for my picks from Junonia.  I just can’t keep myself clean when I garden, so why fight it?  
• Always wear gloves.
• Get a trowel and a pruning shears that you really love—you’ll use them a lot.  Do not let anyone else borrow them!
• Plant flowers where you will see them.  The best thing I did a few years ago was to incorporate flower planters when we had to build walls along the driveway.  Every time I come or go I get to enjoy the garden!    Our butterfly “garden” is a real mess, but my husband can see it from his computer desk.  He often gives me the report of the animals that have visited.
• Move your plants around.  I’ve learned to pay attention to where a plant is happy.  If it’s not happy, I move it to a different micro-climate.  I just moved a dianthus across the driveway.  It wasn’t flowering, and now it’s bursting out, with just a tad more sunshine each day.  Makes me happy. 
• Share!  When your plants are happy they grow, and pretty soon you are over grown!  Plant shares are a marvelous trend.  Look them up in your town—or start one with your neighbors.  This year I challenged myself buy no new plants.  It’s been fun to share and swap and move things around.  
• Stop to smell the flowers.  There is always something that needs to be done in a garden, but remember to occasionally step into your garden without a trowel in hand.  Just look, listen, smell, and enjoy.  I have a plaque in my garden from my dad, a great potato gardener, that says something like:  ”You are never closer to heaven than when you are in your garden.”