Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Advantages of Bad Design

I'm not much of a garden designer.  Ha.  I'm not a garden designer at all.  However, in years of hanging around gardens and gardeners and reading garden design books, I have learned a few things.
The big one, the one that I not only advise others to do, but also actually follow myself, is to plant things where you will see and enjoy them. My ever expanding cottage garden, for  instance, is located out my front door, where I see it every morning when I get the paper, most evenings when I walk home from work, and an increasing number of evenings when I swing on the porch swing.  The prairie garden is next to the driveway and out the kitchen window, so we see it when we drive or wash dishes.
Previous owners, however, either didn't heed this basic advice or had very different life patterns than I do. With the layout of the house on the corner lot, there are very few spots not visible from either street, the front door (north side), the garage door (east side), or the back patio (SW corner).  The existing iris, peonies, roses and mock orange were tucked into the few places that I just never see.
While I missed the first day of the roses (I think the west side roses started Wednesday) and never did see all of the irises, this poor design does have one advantage.
I don't feel guilty in the least when I cut the flowers.
[Envision a picture of a gorgeous iris peony bouquet until I figure out how to post it while on the road]

2 comments:

janet said...

Not feeling guilty about cutting a bouquet is definitely a good thing!

Sparkling Squirrel said...

Indeed, if people have the space, I highly recommend planting in areas that aren't seen much for optimal cutting.