The English Garden

When I was first married, Ellie was one years old, my ex
husband and I built our own home for ourselves on his 300
acres family farm. The house is almost 6,000 sq. ft. and is
brick in the shape of an "H" with a beautiful Southern wrap
around porch. We started with, or should say I, small beds
around the house. What I could afford was too small scale
for this monster of a house so we hired landscape architects,
three to be exact, until we finally did a large scale plan for the
whole yard.

I wanted a four square English garden with stone pathways and bordered by rose gardens with
landscaping all around the house and backyard fence. I wanted plantings that a would allow

me to see color all year long. The gardens fell behind after I left in 2006 and very little
was done to maintain them. Most of the flowers were choked out by dead leaves and
weeds. My daughter, Ellie, has been asking me to help her bring the beds back for a
while now. Last Sunday I drove back to the farm to help her with the beds, it was a lot
of work, but actually a lot of fun. Even Edmund came over to help hall of the debris pulled
out of the garden. Afterwards we sat up on the porch for some wine, the big people only,
prepped by my ex.

And a picture of Ellie as we were finishing up. I will go back in the fall and help divide
up the hosta, liriope, etc. and moved somethings around to better places. I also plan
on bringing her somethings in my own garden to add to the blank places to make the beds

look fuller.  I did end up getting poison ivy on my hand, still well worth the bonding time!