Beautiful Plants For Your Interior
This year was the first year I’ve attempted a slightly larger-scale garden. In the past, my gardening attempts have been safely and practically limited to a couple cherry tomato plants and a few sunflowers. One time, I sprinkled some arugula seeds in a small bed, and now it’s popping up all over the place.
Encouraged by these modest successes, I was confident that it was time to raise the gardening bar at the little oak house. So I spent last winter huddled on the couch under a fuzzy blanket, watching YouTube videos, reading gardening catalogs and books on permaculture, and following a dozen gardeners on Instagram.
Suddenly, my mind was flooded with possibility.
Think of the tasty things I could grow RIGHT IN MY OWN YARD!
I would never need the grocery store again!
My yard could be a jungle of lush, green, towering plants!
Flowers everywhere!
Herbal remedies!
The sights! The smells!
Pollinators and birds would worship me for my yard of abundance!
So in December, I ordered a load of wood chips and charged into the yard with pitchfork in hand, ready to turn a mountain of mulch into rows of no-dig garden beds.
Then I spent a fortune on seeds and a seed starting kit, converted my kitchen into a nursery, and ta-da! I was pretty much a master gardener at that point.
Needless to say, I ended up making A TON of mistakes.
But it turns out that sometimes things will still grow in spite of the over-zealous, inexperienced gardener that the universe assigns them. Plants are great like that.
So here’s a recap of a few of the things that went right this year, in spite of my bumbling efforts.
Starting in April….
In May, I was rewarded with the first bloom on my first David Austin rose, Gertrude Jekyll. The smell is straight from heaven. I probably crouched here for hours just inhaling these beauties! I think I have no choice but to add one or two of these roses to my garden each year. They are pure bliss!
I tried to have a couple water sources for pollinators, but I think Jackie probably used them the most.
Jackie was thrilled with all the new hiding places the garden provided. He especially loved regularly flattening the catmint.
By June, the perennial herbs and direct-sown veggies were definitely starting to take off.
Here we have chijimisai, carrots, catmint, yarrow, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and sunflowers. The chijimisai has bolted, but who cares when you get an explosion of cheery yellow flowers like that!
Here in Zone 7a, July equals SO MANY FLOWERS! Sunflowers have been my foolproof go-to for years, but now I’m definitely adding cosmos and zinnias to that list! Just some occasional deadheading rewards you with months of vibrant, pest-resistant blooms. I can’t wait to see how many of these have self-seeded for next year…
With the coming of August, the sunflowers began to droop, and it seemed more tomatoes were ending up on the ground than in the kitchen. The weeds also surged with a vengeance, and for me, I’m afraid gardening fatigue began to set in. The work piled up, the temperatures soared, and the girl (me) just wanted to sit in the shade….
I wish I could say I viciously attacked all the crab grass in this picture in a timely manner, but I’m sitting here in late October, and that same crabgrass is probably the only thing still thriving in that bed. I’ll spare you the picture of what it looks like now.
You can’t win them all, right?
Overall, my first “real” garden was a ton of fun, but also a ton of work. There are definitely some different strategies I’d like to try next year to keep the weeds from being the happiest plants in my yard, and if this year has taught me anything, it’s that I have so much more to learn.
I still need to spend some days (if not weeks) cleaning up the planting areas and prepping them for next year. Then I’m looking forward to another cozy winter of gardening education and planning — a change of pace that’s going to feel mighty nice for awhile!
– Kendra
Attempted gardener, crafter, etc.
