My garden is my refuge. I love to sit out there in the morning with a cup of coffee, and in the evening with a glass of wine. I put in a patio last spring, and I spend a lot of time on that, surrounded by the beds and container plants. After work, it's very "decompressing" for me to walk around, see what's sprouted, and deadhead what needs to be.

There's a little bit of grass left, for the dogs to relieve themselves! Dogs have trampled through the beds on occasion...I have learned to put "treasured" things in raised beds, which they run around rather than through!

I plant what pleases me. My mother started me on the gardening bug, and, for years I lusted after anything of pastel shades, as she did. Recently, I have embraced bold oranges and reds as well...so, there certainly isn't a "color theme!" I have some cool plants that I started from seed, many received in trade from GW members, which makes them that much more interesting to me.

So, it's "my" garden, but, with a lot of genetic influence!
Emily

My garden is really several gardens. The Âmain garden was reclaimed from lawn and is in its third year. Most perennials are established, but I am always adding something here and there to Âfill it out a little. ThatÂs the garden I like to walk around, weed a little and deadhead a little, while dreaming big dreams and planning big plans. Behind it are rows of berries and then fruit trees, so it is meant to be walked about and through. The never-ending project is trying to get the perfect combination of plants for spring thru fall color in all the major colors and in various sizes. Like I said, dreaming big dreams and planning big plans. The herb garden is just a collection of, um, herbs. It is constantly plucked, picked and poked. The path to the pond winds through the remains of an old tree farm, basically a stand of blue spruce and fir trees with a couple of wild apple trees thrown in for effect. It is kind of like a faerie garden, the path widens in a couple of places to let in some dappled sunlight, and the lawn is as much deep, spongy moss as it is grass. Right now, there are just native ferns and other plants in the deep shade, but eventually I would like to plant the area with a variety of ferns and shade-loving plants. It is kind of a magical place. Around the house this year I planted almost two dozen roses. I grew up watching my mom care for her extensive rose beds, and I finally got around to trying my hand at growing them. Success or failure will be determined over the next few years. Beyond the lawns are deep woods with streams and the main pond. Natural, they sport surprising color when least expected, much like the open fields around the corn field. But, these are not gardens in the sense that I maintain them. Still, they are beautiful in texture and color. Then, there are the new hostas around the farmerÂs porch in a various shades of green, blue, yellow and white with even more leaf styles and shapes and interspersed with astilbe and brunnera. Each garden has its unique attributes, needs, purposes and effects. Mind you, these gardens are NOTHING like the amazing photos I drool over that are posted in this forum, but they are mine, and they help maintain my sanity.

narcnh

Nice thread! First off, I've got to say that you need to picture my yard as Fred Sanford's "Empire" - it is that messy. That's why you'll laugh at how good I am at denial in "What my garden means to me".

It is, most basically, my hedge against death. Phoenix, resurrection, whatever your take - a seed dies by breaking open, and incredible new life comes from it - snapdragons are my all time favorite - those teeny tiny seeds producing those beautiful flowers! It is a spiritual place for me - I am a Celtic princess in my own mind (LOL), and my herb garden is my favorite, but my woodland garden is not far behind - then again, the sun gardens...

My DH is not interested in participating, although he likes the results - and that's ok with me - I AM a bit proprietary about the yard. I could adjust to sharing if it were the right thing to do, but at the moment, I'm glad I don't have to.

I live in my yard as often as I can.

if you squint really hard, you could call my garden a potager, i suppose, if you were being kind.

for me, the garden is merely the happy byproduct of the whole joyful, sanity-making process of gardening. it's the process itself i'm into -- planning & building beds, creating compost & tending the microherd to improve the soil, reading all the theories on how this stuff ought to be done, scoring seeds & starts from unlikely sources, fussing over germinating jugs & flats, propagating the next generation, babysitting wee seedlings & protecting them from ravening squirrels, ripping out spent crops & figuring out what follows what where.

i'm mostly concerned with making the plants and the land itself happy, not so much with the overall effect. i don't give too much thought to proper color combinations or bloom sequences. i just grow plants i like in the best situation i can give them.

but occasionally, i'll look up from weeding or tending some small shoot & really take in the fact that it's a whole garden & to my eyes, it's really purty.

and i love hanging bags of tomatoes on the neighbor's door & running away giggling.

I'm loving reading through what makes your gardens tick & come alive to you...please keep them coming.

My garden started because the poison ivy was getting too close to the house and I was paying taxes on land I could not use. It has been almost 6 years since I had the land cleared and garden sections developed comprising 3 rooms - upper room, middle room complete with a circle of thyme and a huge boulder, and the lower room of wetlands ending at the brook. I also thought of it as enhancement for when the time comes for my estate to sell the property. I also viewed it as physical exercise as I head toward retirement and plan to be here in my final days - whenever.

Not having married/had children or have family of any kind, the development of this land has been like raising a family. My plants are my kids.

While I continue to plant, move things around, fight with all the animals, probably the best 'use' of my garden is to just be able to listen to the birds, be able to see some sky (and watch the wind in the trees)as the weather changes, and block out the noises of the street. I feel like I have developed my own park.

While not enclosed like the true 'secret garden' I do have one area enclosed in low wire fence (to protect from rabbits) in which I made a dry stream and pond with a dragon sculpture in the middle of the pond, a low oriental style bridge over the stream, and the one place I can plant annuals for their color. I feel like a kid when I enter, walk along the edge of the stream seeing all the stones and rocks, cross over the bridge, and continue the path to the far end of the garden. Scared my neighbor when she heard me talking out loud and she couldn't see anyone else there.....I was talking to all my little kids, cooing, stroking them, encouraging them to be strong.

So my backyard serves many purposes to maintain some balance...sort of like mental therapy.

How do I use my garden? My garden is my journal it is where I express and try to work out the most intimate details of my life. It is the singular place where I feel safe enough to openly express every emotion. There is no gardening task thought by others to be mundane that hasnÂt helped me express my feelings. The summer prior to our oldest daughter leaving for college I could find the release of a good cry without having to explain why each time I mowed my lawn and I must say the lawn hasnÂt looked as good since. There has never been a better hole dug in my yard than when I am steaming mad about one thing or another. The humility and laughter shared with a friend while begging her to take home a plant that I finally admit I will never be able to grow with the smallest margin of success. I found comfort in the repetitive act of weeding the year one of our daughters was ailing and I was constantly fearful. I have also felt the exuberance of pride when someone I have never met before had something nice to say about the garden. With all of that said DH and I have reached the time in our lives when we are looking to move (at least part time) and begin a new chapter so now I need to work on the guilt I am feeling for leaving behind all my friends to a new holder of the gate key who might god forbid be emotionally stable.

My gardens are my peace. They are the one thing in my life that doesn't talk back, have a deadline, demand attention this very minute, aren't mechanized so can't break, and can be changed on a whim.

Without conciously realizing it, I have planted for ongoing fragrance. The sense is so real, particularly in the morning, and so soothing.

My garden is also used to get to know good people better. I doubt I'd have the relationship I have with my neighbors without the kids in and out or someone stopping in to find out what's causing that huge burst of color. Just being out and around leads to laughing conversations and just good feelings. And there's my GW pals and great gardening people I've met along the way ....

It's an absolute basic in my life: Dig a hole, add some nutrition, put in the plant, water it, watch it grow (or not). There's no angst -- they're just plants.

It is also the place I can be as out of the box as I want and not care at all. I have tomatoes growing through roses, Indian Corn planted next to the light posts for fall effect, purple and orange in the same bed that works.

So, I guess I use my gardens selfishly. For escape, for solitude, for peace, for nurturing. The fact that it really jazzes up the house isn't a bad thing, either ....

Martie

Our house is (still) on the market, so I haven't been adding much to the garden the last year or so, more maintaining. Still, when I walk around the property I get a nice "hey, I did that!" kick. I have the blends of what I consider sanity plants - the early blooming bulbs (that make me smile and hope that winter will eventually end) through to sedums that hang on with gorgeous color 'til it snows. There's what is quickly becoming a hedge of bright yellow coreopsis - who knew I had the perfect growing conditions for that until it took off? It's bright and blooms all summer and doesn't hate me or die when I don't get around to dividing it like I should. It forgives me.

I guess the whole thing is therapy - learning to go with the flow of conditions in my corner of the world. I have big dreams of climbing roses but the soil or the sun or something isn't right so, while they come back every year, there's not a whole lot of climbing going on. Apparently, the lesson is to keep my feet on the ground.

The control freak has to take a back seat since my mother and husband are likely to plant something while I am away. I had to accept that I will not have the graceful sweep of a single color of creeping phlox along the wall. But the multi-colored haphazard (the control freak speaking) arrangement is undeniably cheerful. And hey, it all comes back every year.

I still long for the herb garden to be just outside a kitchen door at the mythical next house, but in the meantime the sage, garlic chives & majoram are thriving near the drive and, not incidentally, holding the hill and gradually eliminating the need to mow the slope, which is no small gift.

These are the lessons that not having my dream property or dream garden teach: acceptance and joy in serendipity; gratitude for grace when plants that shouldn't make it do, or when the unplanned addition has a wonderful side-effect; adaptibility when those plants that I love won't make it but the shoot that was unnoticed in the pot turns out to be an iris. Which seems to be thrilled in its new home. Who'd have thought it? I'm learning to be grateful for what I already have. The tao of gardening on a postage stamp.

What an interesting and moving thread. Do you know the works of Stanley Kunitz, a former poet laureate of the US? He was a noted gardener, loved his gardens and wrote of them often. A book written late in his life, "The Wild Braid", is about his love of gardening and its importance in his life. Here is a quote:

"I think of gardening as an extension of one's own being, something as deeply personal and intimate as writing a poem. The difference is that the garden is alive and it is created to endure just the way a human being comes into the world and lives, suffers, enjoys, and is mortal. The lifespan of a flowering plant can be so short, so abbreviated by the changing of the seasons, it seems to be a compressed parable of the human experience."

He said in interviews that his garden gave him strength to go on and renewed him. He died this spring at the age of 100.

Patty

What a great idea for a thread! and what fun I've had reading about all of YOU and your thoughts on what your gardens mean to you and how you use them. So many thoughtful people out there... it's a priviledge to read your insights.

Lately, I don't seem to use the gardens here, at all! rather, they seem to use me. :) Their demands of me are actually a blessing. I am forced to stop thinking about the many things that trouble my mind and drain my energy and simply do the simple things that must be done; weeding, some fertilizer, some dividing, adding a little "something" to a naked spot that has vexed me.

The 4 cats, the dog, and Mum all use the gaHdens daily. They provide plenty of "clubhouses", rodents, insects, whatever cats like to keep them reasonably close to the house. The gardens lure my elderly mother outdoors several times a day. There are chairs placed in various places and there are safe, level paths for her to enjoy. Were they not there, she would likely be housebound and infinitely less "mobile" than she presently is.

There are birds aplenty here. Feeders in the vegetable garden (fenced) permit some marvelous "birding"; Audubon always stops here to count birds in the spring. There is wildlife, too. Just last night the dog treed a 'coon. Sadly, I rescued an elderly cat from a fox 3 yrs. ago... but it was a handsome fox! and since we added the present dog there have been no more fox cries in the night. I love to sit in a chair and watch the aeronautic ballet of bats at twilight and dawn. Magical!

I love the gentle patter of leaves in the wind. I love the smell of rotted vegetation after a rain or on a humid day. The ferns in the wind are so pretty... . I love mowing the lawn; an hour and a half of exercise and complete isolation inside my ear protection. And the smell.

The gardens here are a tranquil refuge from daily stresses. They're also an exercise in planning and the magic of seredipity... when something totally unplanned delights you. The helpmeet is "Annual Man"... he likes vegetables... only occasionally will he suggest something to "Perennial Woman"; often it's a good one. But mostly, the gardens are an affirmation that life goes on, and nothing ever remains quite the same. I find great hope in that, and it soothes me when I'm worried about things. They give me a grounded sense of security, even though the medium is precarious by nature.

Alright. I shared some thoughts of the great Stanley Kunitz, but let's see if I can articulate what my gardens do for me.

This is harder than I thought.

I like that the garden keeps my mind active; that I have to solve problems and be flexible. I love watching things grow. I love finding out what my plants love. I love mothering my plants in the same way I love mothering my children; finding out what they need and what strengthens and enlivens them and then doing my best to supply it.

Gardening nourishes my body as it nourishes my brain. I love sticking my hands in the dirt, especially in the spring when the dirt is fresh. I love tending the leaves and flowers of my plants...their delicateness, their cool. I enjoy the sweat from the labor of digging and planting.

I love that the garden is ever changing, ever flexible...forgiving of my mistakes. A constant source of surprise and wonderment. An exercise in patience and tolerance.

It feeds my senses, all "six" of them! It connects me to nature and takes me out of myself.

Must go garden now.
Patty

Chelone, I also wanted to say that I love this:
The gardens lure my elderly mother outdoors several times a day. There are chairs placed in various places and there are safe, level paths for her to enjoy. Were they not there, she would likely be housebound and infinitely less "mobile" than she presently is.

I hope that my children will do the same for me some day in the (far, far) future.

Patty

Tricia -

What a lovely idea for a thread! It gives each of us a chance to reflect on our own feelings about and uses of our gardens as well as a chance to eavesdrop on others doing the same. Thanks to all who have contributed.

My folks arenÂt gardeners, but my granddad, the parents of one of my childhood friends and a neighbor growing up all influenced my love of gardening and as I putter around the garden, I remember them. I have four garden areas. Around the house, which is surrounded by open farm fields, are flower gardens and along the road in our extended side yard is the vegetable garden. Down the road is my husbandÂs shop, which is approached by a 1/4 mile wooded driveway where I am subtracting bramble and poison ivy to allow the more decorative existing plants to flourish and adding native plants and those that will grow in acid woodlands without too much care. My goal there is to have varied texture and form punctuated by seasonal flowers. Around the shop are flower and shrub gardens as well as one wooded "island" surrounded by a small field and woods. Both the wooded island and the woodland edge are planted similarly to the driveway.

My gardens provide me with spiritual sustenance, intellectual challenge, and physical activity. Like Marie of R, my garden is more about process than the result, though they do provide me with beauty and food. Like her I also love the mental challenge of land stewardship and finding the right place to make a plant happy, though sometimes it happens through trial and error.

Because the two gardens by the house are close to the road, like Martie they provide me a chance to meet and greet neighbors, whether they stop by to visit or ask what a particular plant is, pick a few veggies, or just honk and wave hi as they tool on by. Often someone who stops by for another reason leaves with a division of a plant.

Our gardens provide wildlife habitat and the enjoyment we get from watching our wild visitors. There are berries and nest sites for the songbirds, the old farm pond for the frogs to visit in spring, occasional food for deer ;>(, and right now we have a turkey nest with a dozen eggs under the low hanging hemlock on the meadow edge. Other visitors include various hawks, coyotes, foxes, several varieties of woodpeckers, ducks, and an occasional moose or bear. We often sit on the back patio in the evening to see who comes wandering through the garden or the field.

ItÂs pretty much just mine - DH mows the lawn and enjoys the flowers and produce, but he doesnÂt get involved in planting or maintaining otherwise. I know my garden wonÂt ever be finished, but the it's a joy to work toward an end, even one I'll never reach.

When I was a kid my parents built a summer cottage by the beach in Plymouth. I spent every summer there from the time I was 7 until I went away to college, and this was always "home" to me. My mother was an avid gardener but her garden was sadly neglected after she died. My father retired and lived here year-round until his death, after which my brother and I inherited the property.

At first, I was living and working in NYC (my brother was in Minnesota) and I would come up to vacation and deal with estate issues. I have a scientific/landscape architecture background but had little practical gardening experience. Since I'm the type of person who likes to learn and develop new skills, I couldn't resist exploring around and trying to re-establish my mother's old garden.

One thing led to another and when I decided to retire, I built an addition to the old house (my brother and his wife live there now) and I started to establish a new garden using most of the plants I'd saved from before construction.

What began as almost an intellectual exercise has become something much deeper as I find I'm getting attuned to a real sense of place here. There's a feeling that certain plants (not necessarily native) belong here while others, no matter how beautiful, do not, even if the conditions are perfect for them. I feel as if I'm being driven partly by my own esthetic sense but also by some unspoken requirement (preference?) of the ecosystem. In a way, it's tied in with being a steward of the land, as others have mentioned. Like Marie of Roumania, I'm concerned with making the plants and the land happy.

Sounds heavy, but I suppose I'm redirecting the intensity I showed in my working life, to a new direction and new ways of personal growth.

It's not all relentless purpose, I love to dig holes and to nurture plants. I marvel at the birds and squirrels and the huge snapping turtle across the street yesterday. It's a gorgeous breezy day and the trees are rustling and swaying and enjoying the sun, and a hummingbird just visited the phlox.

And my bread just finished baking, so I'm out of here.

Claire