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Tue 24 Jun, 2003 10:29 am
Every garden should have one what??[/i]
You tell us!
There are some plants and features which I think should feature in all gardens, and I am curious if you have similar thoughts!
To begin, I think it is essential that all gardens should have two garden chairs, whether they be folding chairs, plastic chairs, or even a wooden bench for two!
A path. Every garden, no matter how small, needs a path.
After I put a path in my tiny front yard, my neighbour came over and thanked me. Apparently, her dad, who was a gardener in the north of England in the 1910/20/30's felt it was bad luck not to have a path in a garden. I probably should look up the symbolism some time. Maybe it's some kind of English Feng Shui?
Oh, I've never heard that before! Luckily enough, I built a tiny little brick path in the vegetable patch last summer
A path is great! Especially one that can meander enough so that you don't see it all at once. If only we all could be so luck to have enough room in our gardens!
I'd add to the list a little pool/pond. They're easy to maintain, just need to keep the mosquito larvae from maturing. Gold fish work for that as do chemicals.
As for plants, I think everyone should have a japanese anemone!
Every garden should have a convenient place to store garden tools.
Ideally the tools would walk right back to the convenient place, but in this imperfect world constant vigilance is necessary.
Therefore, every garden needs a nag.
Oh..great ideas so far...chairs, path...absolute certain essentials!
Color and fragrance....thats my contribution. And perhaps a fruit tree of some kind? Not that its a certainty but, more a nice addition.
It should have some sort of foolproof, can't-kill plant so that you're guaranteed of success even when everything else fails. For us, this is Boston ivy.
I'm liking these. It reminds me of a game we used to play, "I'm going to France and I'm taking an Apple."
Every garden needs a chair, a path, a pool, Japanese anemone, a shed, a nag, a pile, fragrance, color, Boston ivy... sunlight, shrubs and shade.
You might be interested that the Japanese had a saying: every garden needed the three friends: A pine, a plum tree and bamboo.
Every garden should have some plants for winter colour too - some kind of berry, and some winter flowering pansies!
Piffka, that reminds me, every garden should have some spring blossom, such as cherry or apple - I'm guessing plum trees have pretty blossom too..
errrrrrrrrrrrrrr we've got no winter-flowering anything here. we have snow. which sort of rules out plums and bamboo as well. :: sigh ::
i've got some interesting branches and berries for winter 'interest'. and i just got an arbour i need to install - basic, but i think it'll add some shape to the top end of the back garden.
Every garden should have something that flowers blue. Bees love blue, and by attracting them, you get better pollination all around.
Borage and bachelor buttons are good choices, plus they tend to reseed all by themselves.
If you live in a warm enough climate, sage and lavender are also nice additions.
Is there anything more beautiful than a blossom touched with snow?
Yep, plums can have gorgeous blossoms -- I have some Thundercloud plums... hmm, here's a photo from a nearby plant nursery. After the flowering, the leaves come out dark purple.
Oh, I missed something very, very important.
Every garden needs a child, or two, or four!
Make sure to pass down the tradition.
Wow, I never saw a plum in blossom before, lovely!
We have lots of flowering plum trees here. The blossoms are the same color as our redbuds, but larger. They're beautiful. As for blue in the garden, nothing can beat morning glories, I think. I also have blue salvia. And I couldn't agree more about a child. I have a small English four-square garden in my yard, and one quarter of it belongs to my son. He decides what to plant in it every year, and it always has to be something different. I love taking him to the nursery and answering all the questions...well, most of them.
winter-flowering pasnies - I'm still laughing about that one. We can sometimes get some weird cabbage to grow through the first part of winter.....
Laughing? I'm sobbing
- posting about the 10 months of winter on BBB's storage thread and then coming back to people with winter-flowering pansies
Aw, it's too soon, but you'll laugh maybe next week.....?
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