Katy, you always have the most interesting threads! And thought-provoking ones, too.

I started to reply to this, and then my thoughts kept going off in other directions, and then I would remember something, and so on.

And so now I will need more time to collect my thoughts on this and write a relatively coherent post.

In the meantime I will be looking forward to the replies of others!

:)
Dee

I like this post.

Like Dee, I'm going to go ruminate a while before putting thoughts to keyboard.

The first thing that came to mind, though, was graduating from extremely drought tolerant species planted very near the house (when we were on crappy deficient well water) to more normal species planted further away after city water lines were extended to our property.

Makes a big difference...

Great thread, as I had been looking through photos recently when my daughter visited from Dublin and thought, my, how the yard has changed! It's really stamped now as my place... well, I should say "our" place as my DH has developed a deep interest in gardening and plants. What has happened is that we took over the yard since we first moved in 6 years ago and have marked it as ours... putting in a long fence, a patio area, a retaining wall, an arbor, a Heritage River birch tree, and various garden beds on all sides of the house.

Our yard actually had no bones when we moved in... now it does. I'm sure that as the birch tree grows, we'll have more shade and some plantings will be changed.

I like thinking of gardens as "evolving interests" ... that's a great phrase, but they're also creative expressions. What was beautiful to me (in clothing, for example) when I was younger has changed... so the same will probably be true of my gardens. Hmmmm, maybe not. Some plantings I think of almost as my "children" ... okay, kind of my neglected children as this weather has gone south, but they know that I love them.

Molie

We moved to our current home in 2007. Now with plenty of space and sun, I can consider sun loving plants. The property has been neglected for many years. It was kept decent but its former life was a small working farm and apple orchard. The fields were kept open by leasing them to a dairy farmer for growing cow corn but the farmer was careless and didn't feel it was his responsibility to correct erosion problems. A new farmer has agreed to take over and since he also owns logging equipment the first step was to clear areas where the woods had started to encroach on the field. He and his helpers are still in the prep process although he had expected to seed a hay crop this year. A cold, wet summer has disrupted his schedule. For anyone who dreams of acreage, let me explain that it involves a big responsibility.
I keep reminding myself that I want to keep flower and vegetable gardens manageable. I'm not getting any younger and at our other place we didn't have to worry about witch grass. Interests evolving? Mine are facing reality. Half of hot, humid sunday was spent removing a circular garden bed that was poorly planned by the former gardeners. It only took one year of neglect to turn into a nasty weed infested plot. Fortunately my husband has a small back hoe so after removing chunks onto a tarp we sorted out what perennials could be saved (not many) and sent bucket loads of weedy crap to the junk pile. (notice I did not say compost) I am still debating what is the best use of this small bed.
Necessity demanded stairs down the steep slope between the new garage and the old rickety barn so my husband could access a basement level garage. This became my new shade garden.
Meanwhile the first new garden bed I planted in 2007 became neglected. It is a narrow herb bed along a narrow brick walk to the former primary entrance to the house. Handy to the former location of the kitchen but relegated to occasional use now that we have a new kitchen on the other end of the house. The circumstances of a sunnier location erased what I used to know about my plants. They grow much more enthusiastically under sunnier conditions. I need to cut back more often. The cat mint, nepeta mussini if I remember correctly, is luxuriant but now overwhelms the bed. My interests aren't evolving. My new situations demand different approaches and better planning.

My husband and I have taken quite a few garden tours over the years. We both prefer a landscape that is manageable by the two of us, me as chief gardener and weeder, he has heavy equipment operator and lawn mower. We want our property to have purpose. Before I looked for pretty, now I wanted a shrub by the bird feeder in front of the kitchen window that will appeal to the birds yet not grow too tall. (Viburnum and cotoneaster, I love you.) I still put pretty, an old washtub full of impatiens, next to the granite step into the barn, color coordinated to look nice next to the faded red paint. (the barn is weathered gray) I really like having cherry tomatoes planted along our small kitchen porch but after two years in the same location and this years blighty summer, they need to go someplace else next year.
An old apple tree behind our house was almost swallowed up by woods. My husband trimmed out some trees and it has gratefully responded to more sun but a decent maple still hides most of it. I think my husband will choose to sacrifice the maple. The deer have already lost several old apple trees to the hay field renovations.
We debate the location of a future crab apple. It must not get in the way of our view but we want to be able to enjoy the spring show. I'd like a variety that would attract cedar wax wings, birds I had never seen before I started going to a bank that had a trees with tiny crab apples next to the parking lot. I choose some red flowers to plant that will attract hummingbirds.
We lived here for a brief time in the early 70s. The old maples along the driveway were dying back then so my husband transplanted a sapling without any real reason for choosing that particular location across the driveway from the house. It now provides summer shade for the south facing kitchen windows and in winter, a great place to hang bird feeders.
So, for me, it is not evolving interests but evolving necessities and purpose.

Interesting topic.

My tastes haven't changed over the 3 and 1/2 decades that we've lived here. I continue to like what I've liked in the past, including styles from the 1980s and 1960s. I'd wear clothes from the former if they still marketted them and I love the resurrgence of 1960s garb. Same with flowers and landscaping.

That said though, our use of our 2 1/2 acre property has changed considerably over the years. It does reflect our changing priorities and pastimes. A recent nasty land battle has caused us to dig out and review our old photos and video clips for court evidence of fences and the like, and it has been both nostalgic and interesting.

Thirty some years ago our property was devoted to pasturing our horses. Our only garden in that era was a large vegie patch, although we did plant beds of transplanted orange daylilies that we still cherish today. Mostly our efforts were channeled into fence and barn building.

Now that we have but a single ancient Shetland pony left living, the pasture has become a large mowed lawn (as the pony can't be expected to keep it grazed down by herself.) Our interests have changed from horse care to creating and tending perennial beds and a walking path for us and our dogs around the perimeter of our land. Garden ornaments and flowers now dot the pasture.

But I love the little reminders that hark back to our young years. Our walking path was originally made by our horses and follows their route up over the hill and through the pine trees, and I love the idea that their legacy lives on as we follow their hoof prints still.

The quaking aspen that began life as a seedling that sprung up inside a clump of Mountain Pink the first year we lived here, quickly choked out the ornamental, lived its life, and eventually died from old age and had to be cut this past spring. It held my clothesline that ran from the house to the tree for years and years, and many a sheet or horse blanket dried in the sun over that line. So although the old tree is gone, the lower part of its trunk was spared to continue holding my colored floodlights, and its progeny that sprung up on the other side of the yard is now reaching skyward.

I love all the traces that bear testimony to our previous, more active lifestyle, and the memories of our horses.

well, if you consider the unruly, eclectic mix of cottage flowers placed haphazardly among several planned varieties, all tidily kempt early in the season, but then over-run by weeds, one could say the outside of my house mimics the inside very nearly to a tea.
Just replace the "flowers" with "furnishings/decor" and weeds with "clutter."

Clutter happens! ;-)

This thread is really interesting, thanks all for a good morning read.

how about less interest?

The addiction is wearing off. the work is too much. Even the color this summer (that I worked hard and long to orchestrate) seemed too loud.

I can still get excited to see a particular bloom or a working vignette, but its more subdued excitement.

actually, as I reflect on what I wrote above, I see the issue. My garden has NOT evolved to my changed interests. I need a garden that reflects my calmer state of mind rather than the exuberance of youth.

But I need the exuberance of youth to convert it.... what a conundrum LOL

Wendy, I'm 100% with you!!!