My Perennial Obsession
- Amy
- May 1, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: May 18, 2020
From the mind of the crazy plant lady...
I am obsessed with perennials. I love to garden and grow things.. ya, I'm pretty much a crazy plant lady. I have house plants and office plants but there's something about outdoor perennials and the hopeful promise of their yearly return that make me extra crazy.
I spent my childhood on a farm. We grew tobacco, corn, potatoes and various other market garden items. My brother and I sold the produce at the end of our driveway in a wooden roadside stand built by my Dad. I was one of those free-range children.
When I got older, I moved away to the city for University. I got a degree in Math, Computer Science - about as far away from digging in dirt as possible. I've now been a software developer for over 20 years but, even in the city, I have found ways to express my green thumb.
When my husband and I moved into our forever home, we created a few gardens. We decided that the garden in the front yard would be presentable and, the one in the back, I could basically do what I wanted. It's kind of like a mullet - business in the front, party in the back. We had a landscaper plan and plant the garden in the front and it is still pretty much the same now. It has your normal stuff: lilac standard, sedum, hardy geraniums, some coniferous bushes. My gardens in the backyard started off small. A few lilacs, cone flowers, elderberry, dogwoods. The first year, I planted a few things in there that I bought from Home Depot because they were pretty.
Two kids and over ten years later, the backyard has turned into perennial craziness. Every couple years, I add a new flower bed. The focus is not aesthetics. I am a collector. I want one of *everything*. In spring, summer and fall, when I have spare seconds (which isn't always a lot), I am puttering and improving my garden. I spend winter planning for the next year.
I decided to start this blog to share happy pictures of my happy garden. I have a fairly green thumb but I'm no master gardener. I read lots of gardening books, do research online and experiment in my own garden to figure out what plant should go where. Sometimes I'll use the scientific names and sometimes I'll use the common (the horror!!). I plan to show pictures of nice blooms, how I plan my gardens, where I get my plants and how I maintain everything.
Without further ado, here are some happy pictures of happy flowers from last year's garden splendor....
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