ear Clients and Friends,

 

Despite the weather challenges this year, our gardens have survived. If well-adapted to an area, plants are incredibly resilient. Most of us looked at our flattened trees and shrubs after the deep blizzards last winter and thought, “Oh no—there’s not going to be anything left”—and after pruning and staking, our plants have straightened up and filled-in just fine. During the 100+ degree heat and near-drought this summer, we thought the same thing. But with some deep watering and TLC, most of our plants came through it all. And then it started to rain again, and cooled off, as it always does, and the plants revived and are giving us a glorious dose of fall color, once again. I can barely keep my eyes from drifting to the windows to stare at the brilliant show. Of course, there was some plant loss this year—after a little heart stab, we remove the dead, or prune the broken, and shift into replacement gear. This always excites me, in my own garden, because it is an opportunity to try something new. It may be a plant I’ve yearned for, or something just introduced, or something I want to test to see if it is adaptable to our climate. The testing part is especially important because it has allowed me to introduce a lot of new and different plants into the gardens I do for you.

The big lesson from this year’s crazy weather is to monitor your gardens and give them what they need when they need it. Prune, water, weed, baby them—you have to do these things if you want a beautiful garden. Like I’ve said maybe a million times: There is no such thing as a no-maintenance garden. Low-maintenance we can do, but not no-maintenance. And believe me, as I ride around I can instantly see gardens that have been completely neglected. They languish and go back to the wild.

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