A Tale of Two Gardens
For the first time in my life I have fertile earth to play with. But not as much as I expected. Everything is growing so fast at the cottage, that instead of putting my own stamp on the garden with some of my favourite plants, I am really just thinning and weeding and discovering in the process - ever more plants! Recently, enormous hostas began shooting up everywhere! I am nearly drowning in green things.
But...my yard at home is a debacle. A desperate lack of topsoil is the first problem. Since our townhome is not an end unit, bringing topsoil in requires much goodwill from the neighbour (which we have) and a lot of energy (which we apparently do not.)
What soil we do have is very acidic -possibly owing to the 200 ft. firs towering all about. What grows well is Oregon grape, ferns, periwinkle, salal, huckleberries - and weeds.
About 10 years ago - it seems like 2 - we planted three blueberries and some grass and generally tried to impose some order out there. Haven't done much since though. The blueberries, starved for sunlight, have soldiered on but have never produced more than a handful of berries. The grass is kaput.
But now that I have a real garden, seething with green vitality, fresh motivation has arrived and a cunning plan is dawning.
Step 1: Remove the excess vegetation from my scruffy westcoast backyard. Give the blueberries a second shot at leading a productive life by transplanting them over to the sunny hillside behind our cottage.
Step 2: Bite the bullet (Cottager's bullet too!) and haul in some topsoil.
Step 3: Try, once again but with feeling, to whip our yard into shape. Draw up a plan that includes a path to the forest trail. Give up on trying to grow sun-loving plants and grass. Split up those ebullant cottage hostas, dig up some of the smaller shade friendly shrubs and transplant iris and other well established plants that have over-reached their potential at the cottage into the least shady areas of my city yard. (That will teach them to be so keen!)
This will allow me to tame the cottage garden - possibly even freeing up some space for a jasmine and a lilac. It will allow me to improve my backyard without a big investment in plants. It will doubtless please my townhouse neighbours, who have reserved comment - likely with difficulty.
Please don't imagine this is going to happen quickly. The clearing out and making a plan cannot be rushed. The topsoil project will have to be pitched to my foreman at just the right time, and probably with top-level incentives. But I'm thinking that this time next year, instead of looking like this..... (Oh the shame!)
It might look more like this.... Yeah, that's the neighbour's place...
So really, this is a tale of THREE gardens.