6 Year+ Perennial Garden From Blank Slate

Anna Marie Gustafson
by Anna Marie Gustafson
After removing 27 diseased trees my husband and I embarked on a journey--creating a perennial garden and becoming a certified wildlife garden has been a blessing. We share responsibilities-he is the muscle and I am the designer...we like it that way! Enjoy the images of the year we participated in GardenWalk Cleveland-a free tour of gardens in Cleveland, OH. The year was 2015-Cleveland took a year off the tour due to the elections and the need to raise funds in 2016 but this year-it is coming back! We will again participate in sharing our garden with the public!
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  • Anna Marie Gustafson Anna Marie Gustafson on May 05, 2017

    Thank you Eisset! It is never too late to begin again or work on a 4th or a half of a garden to rejuvenate that which has become overgrown. It also helps to have gardener friends who share their plants! We check YouTube and other nurseries and flower articles online to make sure what we spend on will work though it can also depend on your soil and other elements as well (sun, shade etc.). Our property, years ago, was a nursery and operating farm so our soil is rich!!! We are patient too...very important if you are truly interested in gardening for pleasure and longevity. The four trees were bought around 6ft in height, that was a great expenditure and gave us a good view of how to continue with other plants and such. We scour Goodwill and other thrift shops for statuary and ornaments we have as well. It saves us a LOT of money! We purchased from a discount store, the Japanese Maples you see in the images-originally they were from 2 to 4 ft tall-the Bloodgoods were the tallest. Balance is great and so is going against gardening rules lol...we do not need to have everything equal on one side as the other, just close lol. No pressure/stress is the way we roll!! Since we are certified wildlife gardeners, we limit chemicals-really would love to cut all chemicals but most natural fixes for slugs and blackspot on roses, rabbits munching habits do not work as effectively so we do bend a bit there...but the bees, precious and needed, never taste spray on blooms...we tend to spray the mulch around the roses etc to keep them away. The neighborhood stray cats also keep them from straying into our garden. We never have deer or beetles...and have just had to use pellets once around hosta...once slugs that have settled in tend to die off and the rest of the year, they look healthy and hole-free. Black spot and other rose issues-we spray...but only leaves...and not as often as recommended. We will be using Neem Oil more this year to see how this works! Try to visualize what you want to eliminate and what you want to introduce to your garden and then dig in-you can do it and succeed in having the garden you want...and by the way...the back right side gets sloppy in really rainy weather, water has been an issue thrice in 11 years...that is why we added the river rock path around the back end...it really helps! So, even in our garden, there are tweeks yearly that we have to make, to achieve what you see in the images...we added 12 rose bushes in diff types last year-making a total of 19 so this year, the garden will be awash with beautiful color...that is diff than the images you see as well and the inner two beds we created last year, extending the two crab apple beds in back are full of diff bushes and so on...every year, something exciting is happening as it should...some things go and some things appear...and some we do not add--the birds or chipmunks do...(mostly little bunches of sunflowers from stored seeds last year and we left them intact lol).


    Best gardening season to ya!

    Anna Marie (Gustafson)

  • Anna Marie Gustafson Anna Marie Gustafson on May 05, 2017

    Eisset, I forgot to add, last year we were in a severe drought and basically let the grass go to focus on the flower/plant beds. You can see last August (2016), the inner garden beds we added to the crab apple tree beds in the back of the garden. So, even we have issues dependent on weather conditions and more...the beds look really lush yet the grass was crunchy...I post the good, the bad, and the ugly as you can see, to show that every garden/gardener has to work around all types of situations-no matter, the beds were so lush it mattered not! We eventually want to do away with a lot of grass in back in favor of 3 circles of stones...to delineate areas of the table and chairs, the benches, and the firepit area with seating...we are working on this idea and for us, no rush...lol...have a wonderful time rethinking your gardenscape! Image is smaller than the others, just click on it for the larger view.


    Anna Marie

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