My little backyard cutting garden

It’s done. I did it. I got everything planted that I wanted to plant, and everything is taking off and it is miraculous.

I’ve had a few learning experiences along the way, for some reason I cannot seem to grow a seedling in a pot but I’m going to keep working on that one, I think I let my poppies choke out my anemones so I might have to replant those, and my magnolia tree does not seem to want to rebound from it’s years of neglect – not really sure what to do about that – but overall it’s been a wonderfully successful and deeply enjoyable project.

I grew up all over the west, and moving around so much never really allowed us to settle in and make a plot of land our own. Even when we managed to stay in one place for while, I think it was a habit that was just too hard to break. By the time I was a teenager the only gardening I knew how to do was chopping down blackberry brambles and painting the stumps over with lacquer. In our part of Washington, the blackberries would swallow your house whole if you let them.

I tried container gardening once, and it was a terrible failure. Have I told you guys about this before? I tried keeping a lemon tree and a lime tree in a pot on my deck, but I was so over excited about it that I flooded them everyday and killed them. By the time I finally threw them out they slid out of their pots with an audible slurp like a can of cream soup.

I finally seemed to have found the knack. I’m sure that living in this climate where everything grows doesn’t hurt anything, but I’m so proud of myself that I’m just going to take credit for that too.

I wanted my dream garden to be functional. I didn’t want it to just be some nice looking plants that would hold the dirt in place or that went with the look of the house. I wanted it to be personal. So every thing I planted, every single thing, can be brought inside to bring me a little harmony, a little nature, a little nudge along the way of appreciating the bounty around me. Everything flowers, everything has vibrant color or sweet fragrance, or both, and there’s space leftover for food. I think as it grows in it will be a beautiful place to be, but it will also make it so easy to incorporate the outdoors into our lives.

In the shade of the house I’ve planted Gardenias and Hydrangeas. The scent of gardenia is maybe my favorite thing ever, and the color of hydrangeas are maybe my favorite thing ever, so I love having this big aisle where they can grow together.

On the other side of the door is my herb garden. The parsley and cilantro are always trying to take over everything. I’ve had to uncover the poor oregano more than once. I think it’s time for me to make another big batch of chimmichurri sauce.

Then continuing around the corner we have our grill, and then this long planter starts that I’ve filled with ranunculus bulbs and roses.

I should have ranunculus showing up any day now.

I got super lucky on the roses. I don’t think I would have been able to put them in this year without showing up at the nursery on the perfect day. They were just transplanting all their winter rose stock into 5 gallon buckets, and were selling the leftover bare root roses at 75% off the original price. I snapped up 9 gorgeous rose bushes for $5 a piece, when the 5 gallon roses are now selling for $40. I basically got 9 for the price of 1.

I sorted through the varieties, trying to find them represented in the more mature flowers so I could get a preview of what I was buying. They had these huge fat white roses with a deep strong fragrance called John Paul’s, so I picked up four of those, and then I just took a chance on the others, hoping that I’d get a good mix of colors and figuring that as long as I had my fragrant John Paul’s, it wouldn’t really matter if none of the others had a strong scent.

They’ve already started blooming and I had such a pleasant discovery.
Here’s Cinco de Mayo:

And John Bradley:

And this one’s called Rock and Roll:

It’s hard to distinguish in pictures because right now everything is pretty much the same height, but in that long planter there are two little circles meant for trees. So I planted a lemon and a lime at the end of last summer, and they’re now growing their little juicy jewels.

The planter rounds a corner to a bigger section where that sad Magnolia lives. I’ve shown you this section over and over again because at the foot of this tree is where the poppies and anemones have been fighting it out. But behind the tree, along the brick wall, I planted a bunch of dahlias and they are growing up like corn stalks. I should see some flowers from them any day now too.

There was one part of that planter left bare after all the poppies I attempted to transplant died dramatically. So I decided I would take that opportunity to put in my one favorite flower that I had left out so far. I planted this new variety of lilac. It’s this fabulous deep magenta and one whiff brings me right back to a summer as a kid playing under lilac branches.

Then, around the corner of the house, next to the planter is my vegetable garden, but across from that, right up by the house is a nice shady spot, perfect for one last little flowering shrub. So I planted this salmon pink Camellia.

I saved a lot of money by buying everything small and immature. So even after all this planting the backyard looks pretty bare. I can’t wait what happens to everything through the summer, but I know that by next Spring I’ll have a little wonderland back here.