This endearing garden owner was looking for advice (the rest of her garden was spectacular).
There were so many interesting vignettes in the jam-packed (I should say plant-packed) gardens we visited yesterday that I can only provide a sampling. Foliage plants are used extensively here, and apparently these gardens were quite representative of NW gardens.
An early morning speaker (at the Garden Writers Association conference that I'm attending) pointed out a growing interest in small-scale gardens.
I'm not sure that is anything new, but I'm definitely impressed by the intensive gardening practiced in the private gardens on our tours yesterday afternoon.
Honeybee on dahlia
In the raised bed garden that's the 'main vegetable garden,' I try to practice intensive raised-bed gardening, loosely based on the square-foot method. I'm afraid I'm not methodical enough to be precise about planting -- frankly, I like to play with my garden, but I do try to rotate vegetables as I can.
We eat as much as we can from the garden, but having it look nice is important, too. The garden is right out the kitchen door, so I think about it as a perennial vegetable/flower bed, even if it's made up of annuals. I want it to be pleasing throughout the year. Rotating out plants, reseeding, and routinely adding more compost and amendments; all of these things are part of my gardening year.
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