href="#litres_trial_promo">133
Ann Van Wie – page 69
Walters Gardens, Inc. – pages 16, 17, 18, 19, 24, 45, 47, 53, 56, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 77, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 110
All other photos by the author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Help! My Garden Has Taken Me Hostage!
2 The “Custom-sized” Garden – Perfectly Fitted to Your Changing Needs
3 The Elimination Round: You Be the Judge
4 The Big Swap – Plant This, Not That!
5 Design Solutions for (Almost) Auto-Pilot Gardens
6 Remarkable Perennials, Groundcovers and Bulbs
7 The New Glamour Plants: Flowering Shrubs, Ornamental Trees and Evergreens
8 Contain Yourself, Please! Outstanding Annuals, Vegetables and Shrubs for Containers
I Can See Clearly Now, the “Pain” is Gone!
Garden design: Jack Barnwell
INTRODUCTION
Ahhh, the gardening bug. I know how it feels to have it. There are a lot of us out there – unsuspecting folks who caught it too. And then it took over. We relished digging our lawns out to make room for plants we just had to have: a cutting garden here, a shade garden there, and there’s always an adorable rock garden somewhere! We gardened anywhere we could – including up! This wonderful obsession worked fine for a while… before “life happened.”
Our bodies “suddenly” seemed to age, we discovered new hobbies, adorable children or grandchildren arrived on the scene, job demands changed. We gardened ourselves into a corner. Like deer in the headlights, some of us chose to remain motionless as we watched our gardens slowly fall into disarray. Or we made a frenzied dash and doubled efforts to keep up with maintenance, almost burying ourselves in the compost pile in the process!
Here are just a few of my gardens before I slammed the garden cart into reverse and started downsizing. My overflowing perennial garden is just out of view here. (Pictured on page 35.)
Midway through right-sizing my perennial garden. Friends helped me dig out the plants and fill in with sod. I did leave a small area next to the garden shed for growing vegetables.
This picture was taken in early winter, right after the perennial garden was right-sized. There are two small veggie gardens surrounded by Belgian block stone and a comfy teak bench for relaxing! Just waiting for spring…
I always thought of myself as a low-maintenance gardener. My first three books focused on tough-love plants and practices. I was doing fine until August 27, 2011, when my husband had an accident and broke his neck. By God’s grace, he was not paralyzed, but his ability to help me with the gardens and lawn was dramatically impacted. He had to retire and I needed to get a full time job with benefits for the family. That abrupt bump in the garden path forced me to take a new look at what I considered to be low-maintenance.
This book shares the successful, transforming steps that “decluttered” my landscape. In some ways the exercise is similar to spring cleaning or decluttering closets and rooms. The end results are exhilarating!
This messy, unattractive area alongside my garden shed screamed for attention.
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