A New Year

Happy New Year!! Time to review old goals and set new ones. These were my gardening goals for 2011:

• Become state certified as a landscape designer

I’ve changed my mind about this. I’m a ‘go with the flow’ girl, and right now my life is flowing more towards garden writing than garden designing. Here’s a bit of exciting news I haven’t mentioned yet. I have finagled my way into being assigned a hot plant article for every issue of Alabama Gardener magazine in 2012. – Thanks so much Jennifer!! – What makes this even more thrilling is that it ups my ability to get free plants! And I’ve told you before how I feel about free plants. – Hello My Name is Peggy – When I asked Southern Living plants for one of those new Early Bird crapemyrtles, that are supposed to bloom for up to 120 days, they said, “What color, and how many of each, and would you like anything else?” – I’m grinning ear to ear just writing about this. – I didn’t want to be greedy, so I just got the one white and the one lavender and the one purple rhododendron. 

'Radiance' rhododendron is part of the new Southgate series that are advertised as more tolerant of our heat and humidity. They sent me a nice one with lots of flower buds. 🙂

 I mentioned meeting Dan, president of Terra Nova nurseries, in an earlier blog, There have been several more emails between us, and now he calls me ‘plant ho’. I like it. It suits me. In fact, I’m adding it as a new category. And yes, he is sending me lots of fabulous plants this spring.

Getting back on topic, I’d still like to do just 1 or 2 designs per year, and I found a loophole in the certification law. If I don’t get paid, I don’t need to be certified. So I ask for a donation to the botanical gardens. I get to design and volunteer at the same time. Win-Win

Cindy's backyard was a blank slate.

The design turned out very nice, and Cindy likes it.

• Have a more successful vegetable garden

I’ve done well with this goal. I sent off soil samples and found that the soil was very acidic. I added as much lime as possible without burning plants, and I’ll add more this coming spring. Dale installed a watering system, and we cleared trees to let in more light.

• Add a bottle tree

Budgetary restrictions require this be moved to a five year goal.
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Blanket flower (Gaillardia 'Mesa Yellow') is still blooming on New Years Eve.

• Complete a large expansion of my NW border

I scaled this back from ‘large’ to ‘small’, but it still looks nice. I have to cut myself some slack on this one. I spent much of spring moving plants when Mother Nature changed the lighting in the large front bed from shade to sun. Very unexpected and very unappreciated.

I grew this blanket flower (Gaillardia, ‘Mesa Yellow’) from seed last year. I started them inside under the grow lights about 6 weeks before frost free. They’ve been blooming since late summer. The expansion includes 5 of these, but I left room for a few more because they are fabulous.

• Excavate and plant the water garden

Here’s another goal that needs to be moved to a long term list. The area I want to convert to a rain garden is very weedy. My plan was to kill everything with solar sterilization. It’s not working at all. Instead of being killed, the weeds like the green house effect and are flourishing under the plastic. I even saw a bloom yesterday. I’m not sure how I’ll proceed.

• Work on the woodland garden

This is my greatest achievement and deserves an entire post. Stay tuned.

• Continue to move stuff around and plant new stuff

In hindsight, this was a stupid goal. I do this every year without fail. I must have included it so I would have at least one success. Yeah me!

Overall I’m happy with my accomplishments in 2011. Some are very different from what I had imagined, but that’s what makes life interesting.

I better stop working on my blog and go get ready for the party. Happy New Year everyone!