Sustainable Gardening Blog

Here’s the story of someone who discovered a garden  that so excited her that she instantly caught the gardening bug and determined to transform her own little patch of earth.  It all started when this gardenless homeowner went on a local house and garden tour and discovered this enchanting garden, shown here and previously on Takoma Gardener coz it’s one of my favorites, too.  And best of all, in talking to the gardener/owners, she learned that they did it all themselves, without a designer.  So suddenly this kind of beauty became attainable on her budget and she could imagine herself creating a wonderful garden herself someday.  Actually not someday - now.

Next, in a passionate quest to see the garden again, she looked for photographs of it on line; after all, these days we expect to find everything on line and most of the time, we do.  Her search ended on the Takoma Hort Club’s websites, where she found photos of not only this garden but my own, and the offer of my services as a gardening coach for beginners.  She immediately emailed for help. 

Now construction is about to commence on her home but no, she doesn’t want to wait till fall to start; if we start now she can plan and visualize and fantacize all summer and not waste a minute!

So the work begins soon.  I’ll visit her site - can’t call it a garden yet - and maybe she’ll stop by my garden to see some of the plants I’ll be suggesting.  I’ll urge her to start leafing through garden magazines, watching HGTV, and going on every garden tour in the D.C. area.  But now that she’s felt the first stirrings of garden fever, she’ll probably never be the same.  Readers, our church has a new convert. 

[Photos:  Garden of Dave Roeder and Joe Buriel in Hyattsville, MD. That's the town that was recently maligned by the writers of ABC's now-defunct "Commander-in-Chief"in a recent episode.  Hyattsville was mentioned, oh, 2 dozen times, as crime-ridden and on the verge of race riots. As much as I loved seeing Geena Davis play the POTUS, good acting couldn't compensate for lousy - and badly researched! - writing.  It just made me anticipate missing "West Wing" even more.]