Welcome to My Garden

Welcome to Jean’s Garden!  This blog provides the reflections of an amateur gardener on her garden and her gardening experiences.  I am a flower gardener who grows mostly perennials, and I do most of my gardening in East Poland, Maine — just a few miles north of the more famous Poland Spring.  My work requires that I spend some of my time in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I also have a small garden there (which will occasionally be the subject of this blog).  For the most part, though, I will be focusing on my Maine garden.  Since my house and garden are tucked away in the woods at the end of a dirt road, very few other people see it; gardening is something I do for myself and my own pleasure.

A Brief Tour of the Garden

My garden actually consists of a collection of small-to-medium flower beds.  To help orient you to my garden, let me introduce you to these various areas:

• The Circular Bed – This is the first planting area that I created when I first bought my little house in the woods 20 years ago.  It’s located at the end of the driveway, at the turn onto the dirt road.  Originally, this was a small circular planting of annuals.  Over the years, it has been expanded and refurbished several times and is now about 12′ in diameter.  Here are a couple of views of it in different seasons:

• The Back Slope – Shortly after I moved into the house, my father and I built a set of stairs up a steep slope from the driveway to the back door.  I put whatever plants I had available (beginning with divisions of a rhododendron and hostas from my mother) into this area to hold the sandy soil in place.  Over the years, I have added plants without any overall design.  Here’s how it looks now:

• The Iris Bed – This is a collection of siberian irises planted in a semi-circular bed under a bow window on the front of the house.
• The Bedroom Border – This planting area runs along the front of the house at the west end, under the bedroom window.  Although it has been re-designed, re-dug, and replanted on a couple of different occasions, this has never been a very successful flower bed; it is scheduled for demolition in the next couple of years to make way for a new addition on the house.
• The Deck Border – This is one of several planting areas on the back side of the house.  This one, as it’s name implies, runs along the back side of the house and borders the deck.  It is primarily a shade garden, and this image gives you a sense of its mood:

• Blue and Yellow Border – This is across the back walkway from the deck border and borders the woods.  It is pictured in the header for the blog; and, as you can see, it is aptly named.
• The Fence Border – This is the newest addition to my garden and is still a work in progress.  Last year, I added a section of fence to screen the clothesline from the deck.  This is a semi-elliptical planting that is going on  the deck side of the fence.