Jean's garden
My friend Jean tells the story of her garden and it's recovery from a record-breaking winter.
"What a difference three months makes.
"I took the first picture during the February snowpocalypse, and the others just last week.
"I was sure my two raised beds would emerge as sodden swampland. But instead, the rose bush -- it's somewhere under that downed tree branch -- has sprouted two new bud-laden branches. The Russian sage is back. And the daisies seem to have made like bunnies under that sheet of snow -- they've gone forth and multiplied.
"This is even more amazing given that I'm coming off several years of utter garden failure. Last year, I tried for a sort of a wildflower field in miniature, my garden being your typical Federal Hill postage-stamp size: Oriental poppies (never bloomed), cosmos (grew too leggy and fell over), sunflowers (ditto). Only the nasturtiums, which I grew from seed, flourished. Toward the end of summer I desperately threw a couple of coreopsis plants in there, but they apparently were too depressed by their surroundings to bloom.
"When I went out to survey the winter damage in March, I didn't have very high hopes: It looked like only the ground cover survived and was threatening to take over. The coreopsis and Russian sage were dead sticks. I ripped out most of the ground cover, except for a tidy row around the edges, and planted this year's garden fantasy: sweeps of perennials in the blue-purple spectrum (pincushion flowers, salvia), with splashes of yellow-orangey hues (new coreopsis, more nasturtiums).
"I almost pulled out the old coreopsis and the Russian sage, but gave them another chance -- which they took.
"Ah spring: when even a .200 career hitter like me gets another chance."
Send your garden's story, and pictures, to susan.reimer@baltsun.com. The best thing about gardening is getting a look at other people's gardens!
