A Garden of My Own

A beautiful old urn in the Walled Garden at Coughton Court, England.

          Well, who wouldn't want a garden of one's own?  I sure would!  Mine is located on a space of about 4'x2.5' on a window ledge in a bedroom on the 22nd floor of  a Hong Kong highrise.  So there you go.  Nothing is impossible.  In this blog, I'll let you in on how I overcame all the obstacles in order to have my little garden space thrive.  Oh, don't get me wrong, there were lots of casualties, but every garden has it's failures.  So the challenge was to look for plants to fit the conditions, just like in any other garden.  I'll tell you more later...
 

         In this post I'd like to introduce you to a garden and let you share in the many joys it brought to me.   It was created for the benefit of my mom because she loved plants so much and was no longer able to look after them herself.  So I did the work, she did the enjoying!  I didn't mind the work and she got to boss me around, kind of.

The garden in July in the English cottage style.

This picture shows one of the many daylily varieties that thrives in our poorly drained clay soil.  Lots of other plants seem to prefer these conditions as well, such as Astilbe, Bergamot, Woodbine, Astrantia, Joe Pye  Weed and St. John's Wort, to name a just a few.  Our Roses also seem to be quite happy living in these less than ideal conditions.

Viburnum carlesii covered in blooms.

   This is a garden that has learned to thrive on benign neglect since it only  got a proper weeding twice a year.  I was rarely at home during the months of June or July, so many of the plants in the garden are meant to extend the season as long as possible.  I planted very early bloomers and late summer bloomers as well as autumn blooming plants to provide blooms in every season.  I wanted the garden to have an appeal in all four seasons so I also planted shrubs that provided winter interest.  It is a garden designed to be wildlife friendly so the birds could have a place to roost and food to eat.  I planted Butterfly Weed and  Butterfly Bush for the butterflies and Lamb's Ears for the bees. 

Viburnum carlesii

Scent was also important in the garden.  So Lavender and Roses, Butterfly Bush and Lilacs, Woodbine Honeysuckle and Lilies were added to the mix.  Oh, and my favorite, next to the Woodbine, is the Viburnum carlesii, commonly known as Koreanspice.  It smells like it too!   It's one of the precious shrubs that is thriving in that awful clay soil.  Actually, I got to like the clay soil.  Tough to dig, but once planted, it retained water for a long time which was good during the dry part of the summer.