Most of us have probably admired or envied certain gardens of other people - those lush, mature gardens which have year-round interest. Some people try to get the look as quickly as possible, but even if you can afford to put in a large number of mature plants, it's impossible to create quite the look of a garden with plants which have been in once place for a long time. For people who can't afford to plant 100 mature plants all at once, early gardening can be frustrating and attempts can feel somewhat futile... I've had the experience of being very satisfied with my efforts, only to see the garden down the road and feel like I'll never be able to create such a nice garden.

Well, this is the 4th season I've been landscaping around my house. I currently live in a rural area in New Hampshire, on a large wooded lot with a big, previously empty, clearing where the house is. The surrounding woods and old stone walls certainly do help things, but trust me when I say that an empty yard with nothing around the house foundation is not much better here than it might be in a new subdivision. And I don't have any shade trees - just dense woods at the perimeter of the wide open yard.

The first season, all I did was put in some dwarf boxwood near the foundation at the front of the house. The next season, I added hostas and rhododendron to other sides of the house. Last year (year 2 for those plants) the hostas and rhododendron came back much bigger, and I added a hydrangea and some daylilies, which look bigger and better this year, with the hostas finally looking like large mature clumps. This year, I've added dwarf Alberta spruce and dwarf azalea to the foundation out front, as well as two Northern Sun forsythia, lots more hostas in beds near the woods, and two perennial flower beds, along with some annual zinnia I grew from seed. I've also been planting vegetable gardens in two 4'x8" raised beds for 4 years.

All of the plants I have planted this year are already more mature looking at this point in the summer, and the previous plants have grown by leaps and bounds (within reason - dwarf boxwood doesn't grow that quickly.) While my garden is still young, my rather minor efforts - a few new plants each year, except for a relatively large number of flowering plants this year - have paid off. I really have zero "skills" in the gardening arena - I do look up plants online, but mostly I buy the plants the tags say are perennial in my area (to keep maintenance low) and are right for the particular setting - full sun, part-sun, etc.. The biggest factor seems to just be time. I'm amazed that suddenly this year, I seem to have almost a mature-looking yard, with at least something in bloom at all times.

Clearly this is just commonsense, but I guess my message is that if you just try to plant just a few things each season, and invest in some shrubs (that don't have to cost more than $40 each) each season, before you know it, you'll end up with something that looks varied and mature.