Ten Years in Jean’s Garden

Ten year’s ago today, I clicked “publish” and sent the first post of Jean’s Garden out into cyberspace. At the time, I had no idea how these ten years of garden blogging would enrich my life.

The first unexpected source of enrichment was the community of gardeners and garden bloggers that I was suddenly connected to. In my early years of blogging, that experience of community was mediated by the now-defunct social media garden blogging site, Blotanical.com. Like most members of Blotanical, I signed up hoping to find readers for my blog. But the site was designed to encourage members to read one another’s blogs and engage in supportive interactions, and I jumped in with both feet. Blotanical connected me to an international network of knowledgeable gardeners and garden bloggers. A few of these I eventually met in person. There are others whom I have not actually met, but think of as old friends after years of reading and exchanging comments on one another’s blogs. Regular readers of my blog who are not themselves bloggers have also become part of my gardening community. For example, I now belong to a local garden club that I was recruited to by a friend whom I met through her comments on my blog.

As I interacted with other gardeners through blogging, I became a better, more knowledgeable gardener. Writing about my garden and gardening pushed me to become much more aware of what I was doing and why I was doing it. Garden blogs introduced me to ideas and debates in gardening that I hadn’t been aware of before and to books exploring those ideas. My garden reading shifted from garden narratives and essays to books on garden design to books of garden science. The book that influenced me most was Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home (Timber Press, 2007), which I reviewed in 2011. This book completely changed the way I thought about insects in my garden and introduced me to the case for growing native plants. It also pushed me in the direction of thinking about the garden as an ecological community in process rather than as a work of art.

The learning and thinking I was doing as a garden blogger further influenced the course of my life. As I did research and wrote about horticultural science, my confidence in my understanding and my desire to learn more grew. Without garden blogging, I doubt I ever would have used my time in retirement to become a Maine Master Gardener Volunteer or to earn my Certificate in Native Plants and Ecological Horticulture from the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (where one of the required courses for the certificate was taught by Doug Tallamy).

Just as I have been changing as a gardener in the course of these ten years, so has my garden been changing. When I began blogging, I had three small flower beds at the front of my house and was focusing on developing a garden around the deck at the back of the house. The third of these back garden flower beds, the Fence Border, was in the process of becoming as I published that first post, and the Serenity Garden was just a germ of an idea.

I was also just beginning to think about putting an addition on the front of my house when I retired and using that addition as an opportunity to completely rethink the landscaping at the front of my house. Today, that addition is five years old, and most of the new front garden is in place. This area at the front of my house is now my primary focus in garden work and in garden enjoyment.

It’s not just the size of my garden that has changed. My garden today is less controlled and more exuberant. My design process is as much concerned with creating habitat for pollinators as with creating beauty, and my new garden areas are more likely to include native plants. I’m also much more committed to choosing “the right plant for the right place,” rather than trying to change my garden conditions to accommodate plants that will never really be comfortable there.

Ten year’s on, I’m looking forward to more learning, more gardening, and more garden blogging.