I’ve only been gardening for less than a year. See, I bought this house in January of 2006 and it is the first house I’ve ever owned. Since I’d never gardened before, I didn’t know how to get started, so I spent all the first year planning and figuring out what I was going to do with my yard.
Here are a couple of the things I’ve discovered during this first season.
My first realization is that I have a lot to learn about design and planning! Some of the things I chose didn’t do well at all, or were too small, or whatever, while other impulse purchases ended up being perfect for my yard! I had picked coleus to play a large part in my front bed, not realizing at the time that they aren’t true perennials – they’re “tender” perennials. Which means the first time we get a freeze, they’re gonna die and I’ll have to put a whole bunch of new plants in their place! Oops.
Nonetheless, they sure are pretty now. Some of the varieties I chose turned out to be too small. Take this Black Magic, for instance. Looks great in the pic, doesn’t it?
I got several of these and while they are very pretty, they are still, to this day, very small. Hindsight being 20/20, I see that these would be great for tucking into nooks and crannies, but not for filling large areas as I had hoped.
On the other hand, here’s Beckwith’s Gem.
This one also looks great, and grew nice and big and bushy. But, it turned out to be a lot more wine colored than purple, when purple was what I was hoping for. Oh well, still looks pretty.
The other big discovery in my first year of gardening is that weather is important. I mean, yeah, we all know weather is important to gardening, but I mean, it’s IMPORTANT.
In Spring, it was beautiful outside – low 70’s, cool breeze, gorgeous! I had a great time getting outside and putting those babies in. Then Summer rolled around.
Whew! It’s a good thing my plants don’t need too much maintenance, because it is WAY too hot to be out there messing around. Living in the Southwest Houston area, our summers are quite warm and very humid. This year, more rain and less heat than usual, but still plenty hot enough to keep me inside with the a/c. What can I say, I’m a heat wimp!
So, my big discoveries this year are that planning only gets you so far -some of it just depends on how it looks when it goes in – and that I’m a Fair Weather Friend. When it start heating up outside, Digigirl goes back to virtual gardening!
