private garden, public garden
 
a favourite cottage garden
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
A mosaic door welcomes you to this lovely blue cottage.
 
We had a lovely morning working at Annie’s garden….an adorable house, a charming retired greyhound, an artistic owner who makes mosaics and some pretty amazing hot glue gun creations. Annie’s tile mosaic Kira the greyhound, sweet and sleek I puttered about weeding and cutting back winter debris while Allan made her brick steps more steppable. The blue house with its mosaiced door is an inviting and pleasant environment and in the garden, I feel a sense of peaceful enclosure. stepping path before.....................................................and after The earliest of jewel-like spring bulbs were flowering in Annie’s protected garden: species crocus and iris reticulata. An ajuga had the most amazing bright metallic-pink foliage. In great contrast we then drove up to Discovery Heights, a windswept and spectacular hill of new grand houses where we care for three entry gardens. The upper and middle garden have views of the ocean, although I am usually too focused on the plants to notice much else. The same plant in middle upper and lower garden…red twig dogwoods for example…show highly different growth pattern as they are so much more protected from wind downhill that the lower ones are three times as big. The depradations of deer make these perfect test gardens for the ever changing palate of the deer herds. How dare they chew on my yews? Deer supposedly dislike yew. And why did they chew down all the prettiest twigs on Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’? Why did they eat two out of three Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’? And so on. Cornus alba...dogwood...red twig..................................and gold twig In these gardens, I have been able to use a wide plant palette and so it is with great joy that I see my vision slowly growing. I see in the future of the lower garden a morning perhaps ten years from now when the varying colours of shapes of evergreens, especially the columnar ones, are outlined in a foggy mist like mysterious sentinels. The deer left only this one of three Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’ unmunched. http://www.discoveryheights.comshapeimage_3_link_0