Aaaaah, I've found my soul mate!

I look for long term interest and my garden is never going to be perfect.
I have distinct seasons in my garden, but it is never just one type of plants that are blooming at the same time.
I have spring bulb season (long one, it starts with snow crocus and snowdrops in late February and continues with daffodils, crocus, muscary, tulips, hyacinths)
Lilacs and early oriental yellow roses season overlap with the daffodils and tulips
Peony and Iris season overlaps with roses
Roses season is the same time as mockorange time and includes veronica, aquilegia, campanulas, diantus, foxglove ,etc and overlaps with clematis season
Clematis season overlaps with lilies and phlox
Lilies and daylilies season (includes delphiniums, phlox, etc) this one is really long and overlaps with summer raspberries, currants and gooseberries. Unfrotunately this is also JB season.
Salvia, verbena, dahlia, agastache, butterfly bushes, rudbeckia, liathris overlaps with blackberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and figs
Chrisanthemums (not the cushion mums) season overlaps with fall raspberries, persimmons and fall leaf color.

Something is always at its prime time and something is in decline. My yard is tiny and I want to grow many things, this is the fun part.No perfection here.
Olga

I am a latter type, too, though I DO like perfect moments and aesthetic climaxes. As I told/showed everyone in early May, I forced myself to experience that perfect moment (though in reality it had come 5 or 6 days earlier when the blooming was at its peak) when I cleaned everything up and got the garden RIGHT. That was a very good thing. I can sympathize with you, Suzy. I would almost have to stand on my head to get a photo that didn't contain an eyesore, so I like the garden better now. It was done for a moment, but then life moved on. Plants have gotten too big, too much shade, and wrong labels, so lots of stuff changed today and probably will continue to change.

Today I pulled out three huge mums that I'll only plant again in pots. They taught me that large dense companion plants are for gardens with lots of elbow room. I'm sure they would look lovely spread around - but not packed in. And though it's hot here in July & August & September I still want plants that look nice - bloom - then, too, so I guess I'll be switching them out like today. I'm trying to find wispier tall plants that don't get huge. lol

I think the garden is trying to tell me it's three gardens - spring, summer and winter with the roses as the constant. One thing's for sure. I'm learning why Floridians prune their teas, etc HARD in March. Rose bushes get awfully big here (and I still have months of growing to go). So it appears that constant change with peaks and troughs will be my status quo. This seems to be dictated by my climate, so I'm on a treadmill that I can't get off. And BTW "it's my garden and I can do what I want" applies to me, too, but I think I want it a little easier.

I'll have to get my seedling factory going.

Sherry

I love the idea of year-round interest: spring bulb displays making way for the glorious first flush of roses that fade into summer blooms which flow into fall colors and fascinating hips which gradually step into the background as bold green conifers and striking bark stand against the snow. I have actually accomplished this in clients' gardens. But in my own garden, which is large, what really happens is that I just acquire stuff and plop it in. The bark of the ninebark cannot be seen from any window; the conifers block the view of the best bulbs; one has a long hike thru the heat to admire the agastache; the underplanting of carnations clash terribly with the roses; the hydrangeas are spectacular but can't be seen from the road, leaving no one but the cats and myself to admire them; the evergreens that provide a nice background to summer beds look like lonesome sentries in the winter; the wistful plumes of the ornamental grasses blow all over the neighborhood in February.

Perfection is still out of reach.

I don't know whether the problem of maintaining continuing interest differs that much in a larger garden than a smaller one. I'm really fortunate to have "borrowed" scenery in almost every direction which hopefully helps to mitigate the huge weeds that are the legacy of our bountiful rainy season last winter. Those will have to be dealt with before the fire season, which is going to be really bad this year when all that lush vegetation will be just so much tinder. As far as the garden proper goes, I've tried to choose companion plants that look good even when they're not blooming such as irises, lavenders, day lilies and rosemary and fortunately here the tea roses, chinas, noisettes and Austin roses do bloom for a long time if they're watered. Granted, I don't have a huge variety of companion plants, and a lot of the ones that have to be endlessly dead-headed in order to look good have fallen by the wayside. My garden was much prettier when I first began but I quickly found out that in my summer heat some of the nicest roses and perennials looked as though they'd been blow-torched, and out they came. I had to convince myself that classic simplicity was the way to go. Of course, there's nothing classic, or classy, about those weeds......

Ingrid

thank you for your thoughtful and insightful responses - it is also heartening to hear of other joys and frustrations. Sherry, you are SOOO right - we are on a treadmill - it is almost as hard as raising children sometimes. If I did make an enormous effort, I could probably achieve something rather good, for a short time at least but.....so many different priorities demand urgent action so something has to be neglected a tad.
Oh Catsrose, I think you and I are on the same page. Like you, I also plan gardens for other customers and often maintain them too - I am very strict and the phrase 'less is more' is never far from my lips. Olga, your garden sounds wonderful and bountiful (although I think you and I might differ on our definition of tiny)I could not squeeze in a single vegetable apart from a couple of pots of parsley and mint - but I have the allotment for that...but that is another story with associated problems. Ingrid, of all of us, you seem to have found a good balance and a certain knowledge of what you can and cannot do - good for you - I strive - but I certainly know a lot about weeds at the allotment, ho!
So, I guess we have to look at images of other gardens with slightly sceptical eyes - either they are a set-up and framed instant or they have staff. Christopher Lloyd has, more than any other writer, been quite explicit on how to maintain a beautiful garden all year round - have an energetic gardener/worker, spend rather a lot of time and money and move things in and out of beds and borders relentlessly. Mere mortals, like myself, will have to just focus in on tiny areas of transcendance, envelope ourselves in a little gladioli or lily world, ignoring the less than perfect bits right next to our objects of desire. And, of course, we now have a new kitten, currently rushing around the house with a sock he has 'hunted' from under the bed - (the house is worse than the garden) - one of mine which has been worn most of the week with my pongy workboots! Nice!

Campanula, my "tiny" means 1/7th of an acre :). It is really a small suburban lot, but I use it, back front and side gardens. My side gardens are approx 5 feet wide, just one bed.
Olga

Well you could have the drawn out climax....sigh.

Kings and queens did it. Great public gardens do it. Disney does it. Monet did it.
You just need a staff and an acre or so off-site so you always have the replacement plants growing and ready to go in, so your garden is always at full steam.

Reminds me of breakfast, lunch and dinner of dessert only. Sounds yummy but the reality is too cloying.

I enjoy the ebb and tide of my small garden. The sometimes bare earth with seeds just sprouting. The nodding heads of spent sunflowers that I don't want to remove just yet because I'd miss the birds feasting on them.

The only time all the waiting pots are planted is just before we head out to vacation, an enforced discipline. This means the only time my garden is truly tidy is when I'm gone :-)

I love natures messiness and ups and down, first nothing then overabundance. I like perfection, just not every day.
The journey is as fun as the destination isn't it.

Denise

absolutely, Denise.
Olga, my 'tiny' means 5.5mx11m with a large greenhouse taking up a third of it! It's crammed though. You have to turn sideways or stoop to get around. One small chair (mine). One folding chair (guest).

You know, Suzy, this has been a very enlightening thread. Being a new gardener, I really was unaware of the pulse of a garden. At exactly this point I am experiencing it, but, Denise, your description of the way Kings, Queens, great public gardens, Disney and Monet did/do it crystallized it for me. Yesterday I was educating myself about seed harvesting. There is so much to know about gardening along with so much to do. Oh, to be one of the landed gentry and be in the garden "gardening" with my head gardener. I imagine that would make for a very satisfying day and relationship full of brainstorming conversations - at least it would in my garden. I would be a very egalitarian upper class woman. Sounds like the makings of a romance novel to me, and the heroine would be in big trouble - unless the head gardener was a very old guy which, of course, DH would have seen to.

But anyway, Catsrose, you throw a whole new light on the luxury of a large garden with SO MANY factors to consider when designing and planting. One would really have to have her/his act together from the beginning to get it truly right/perfect. Ingrid, I think our gardens exemplify ones that epitomize the term "experimental". More temperate gardens though still labor intensive get away with a lot due to their lack of extremes. We on the other hand are struggling to get a handle on these extremist gardens of ours. Olga, I was so impressed with your outline of your garden. You have so many beautiful things "happening" and you know when they're all supposed to happen. You are the gardener that I am aspiring to be. Denise, I like your settled attitude. You know what you're doing. Since you're in Florida, too, I'd ask for your companion plant list, but, alas, it wouldn't work me with your many tropicals. The bottom line is that gardening is not for dumb sissies!!!

Suzy, thank you for this thread.

Sherry

Often, limiting parameters are really helpful in crystallizing in your mind what you can or cannot do. For me it's the state of my health and low level of energy, and of course the limitations of my environment. It very quickly becomes obvious when you've overextended yourself or are heading in the wrong direction, and the grandiose dreams plummet to the ground, to be replaced by more realistic but hopefully still attractive options. I need my garden to be my friend and my solace, not the enemy that is forever taking and not giving back enough. I've felt miserably sick since 4 o'clock yesterday morning but the garden didn't have a hissy fit because I was in absentia. I can't do cuttings, collect seeds, constantly dead-head and divide, have a greenhouse or any number of other time and energy consumers, but my garden grows and flowers to be best of its ability and mine. And frankly, how many gardens have we seen that even strive to do what we're doing? How many ho-hum suburban tracts and thrash pile country properties have we all seen? Could we be setting our standards too high? Each of us will have a different answer to that question and, predictably, that answer may vary from day to day.

Ingrid

Well for me looking for perfection is a process, not a goal. I do not exactly care if the perfection is ever there, most likely it will never get to that point, since I constantly find next plant I absolutely must have. Then there are plants I get bored with, or the ones that eventually meet Mrs. Shovel, because they ignore repeated warnings to get nice. There also are plants that I give away, because in reality they look different than I imagined, especially if they bleach to ugly in the sun and so on.

On top of that, there are sometimes self seeded things in my garden that look pretty and I have to adjust other things to look good. Other things get overcrowded and need to be split and replanted. Or I get colors wrong, like now some lemony perennial is an eye sore among pink and violet roses - it has to move from there when it is done flowering!

I am waiting for this garden to reach some maturity though, I think that will be the closest thing to perfection it will ever get. It is nice to start in almost empty lot, but it takes a couple of years to get going.

hmm, well, my garden is still defining itself. I just started with it this past January (with an empty dirt lot)... and I have kind of an extreme climate... very hot/dry summers,... very little rain, mild winters. So I'm sure that some of the plants I'm experimenting with will not survive,... or maybe I just won't like them.

I enjoy working in the yard but I have a very demanding life outside of the garden. I have tons of hobbies and a demanding full-time job. I can't have a garden that requires constant babying. I also don't want one that requires one-on-one watering babying everday either. So mainly, I'm trying to look for plants that are pretty tough, but also pretty pretty, too. I'm picky about the plants I like, too.

I'm not worried about a high standard... I'm just having fun learning about plants and hopefully eventually my garden will fill in and look more like a real garden instead of a collection of tiny babies. :)

I like to have a few plants that bloom at different seasons so that I can look forward to them. Each one is a climax to look forward to. Like the cherry blossoms or the wisteria. A lot of people don't plant wisteria because they bloom so short and then are just leaves the rest of the year.... but I adore them.

I've planted a lot of spring, summer and fall bulbs... but I don't know if they will survive my bad-draining clay soil... but if they survive, they'll provide interest in different parts of the year. The irises seem to be doing well for now.

I have cherry blossom trees in the spring followed by wisteria.
Then roses of course. They have repeated flushes her.

I also have like 5 different types of lavender (some of them are doing better than others... the grosso lavender is doing the best.)

I have clematis, dahlia, agastache, guara, rosemary, thyme, morea, agapanthus, crape myrtle, saliva, etc...
but a lot of those plants kinda are mixed into the roses, so they don't really take up that much space? I'm kindof going for the messy english garden look. I want tall plants sticking up through the roses. We'll see how it looks in a year or two.

My main winter thing is camellias. :)

I like the way camellias, roses, lavender, morea, irises, etc... I like them even when they aren't blooming, and I look forward to their bloom for months before hand, so they aren't just "interesting" when they are at their peak bloom. I watch the cherry blossom trees for months. The little tiny buds are the promise of extreme beauty in a month or two. It's ok with me that they only bloom for about a week.

My garden stops traffic (well, a car or two) twice a year -- once when the roses flush and then again a little later when the daylilies do their thing. I'm happy when other people notice the beauty, but I garden for me, not them, and I'm just as thrilled with seeing the seedling sprout as I am with the bloom. "Perfection" is not in my vocabulary and I wouldn't know "finished" if I fell in it knee-deep. I'm always happy in the garden but never happier than with shovel in hand planting or moving things around to what at the moment seems to be a better spot.

Campanula, you started this thread the same day that I realized, with dismay, that my garden show is OVER until late August/early fall. My garden is only about 5 years old and is just starting to come into its own. I've been concentrating on the roses and just letting the companions mature, so the realization that I haven't planned anything for the hot summer months has only just dawned. After a full 3 months of heavy, constant bloom, all I'm left with now, other than sporadic bloom from the roses, are a clump of phlox paniculata "David," another of rudbeckia "Herbstonne", salvia "Hot Lips", hydrangea paniculata "Limelight", some lantana, the waning blooms of the daylilies "Mary's Gold" and "Autumn Minaret" and some lilies that will open up in a few weeks. It's rather anticlimatic. So, looking forward, I've been scouting other people's gardens to see what's in bloom and can't wait for next summer! More phlox! Agapanthus, crocosmia, nepeta, lots of artemesia, orange canna, and red, red and more red. I've never messed with annuals but will try to seed some areas with larkspur, for spring, and cleome for summer. I'm finding, too, that part of the reason for such heavy spring and early summer bloom is that I've massed the same plants all over the garden. This is not from any design genius but because I've divided my best plants many times rather than spend the money on new ones. The effect is rather nice but I see now where I need to expand my horizons; all that's left is to conjure up the coins to pay for it!

Catherine

Granted - since Roses have the leading roles or are the leading instruments in my "plays" and "Symphonies" there are 2 distinct peaks in my garden year. In warmer sunnier climates they might get lucky to get 3!

With small gardens I find it most important to look for plants with long flowering time - or reblooming abilities - hardy Geraniums like "jolly Bee" or plants that provide interesting foliage or make an Architectural impact or give winter interest. I have had to let some roses go ... and have planted some ornamental grasses (Misc. 'Kleine Silberspinne" and the small hardiest mini pampas grass "pumila") are great even for small gardens - and interesting all winter. Small conifers and box also add structure and is making its way into my small garden spaces. Winters are just too dang long here ... and roses peak 2 times every year ... I just love these climaxes - but
a smaller mock orange - "Silberregen" and my small Palibin lilac and the beautiful spring display of tulips (Queen of nights and a few others and Alliums - get 3 globemasters and some allium Christophi) Grape hyacints and hyacints, Honey suckle "serotina" and Belgica" and clematis making curtains around my windows - the purple gladioli and the overpowering scent of lillies in August are must haves too - even if I have small garden areas - OK granted - 2 times 5x5 m and 2 times 5 x 11 m and 2 small alotments 8x12 m. Everything is crammed together and it works for me and provide year long interest. But the peaks are when the roses really bloom and their scent perfumes the air ... and my soul sing and this year I felt I had - arrived - for the first time - that I was done. That I can only make minor changes now to satisfy - myself.

My garden has a little of both. It is between 1/3 to 1/4 of an acre and I plan for year-round interest with a peak at rose season (mid-end of May here to beginning of June) when the roses and their companions bloom. But I also grow many other plants that provide interest at different times of the year, as well as a some repeating roses for later. Right now the lilies and phlox are wonderful, as are the summer wildflowers of black-eyed susans, coneflowers, and Queen Anne's lace. In spring there are bulbs and spring wildflowers and flowering trees. In fall there are asters, annemones, monkshood, leaves changing colors. Winter is the hardest and barest time, but still there are some evergreens, grasses, berries/hips, interesting bark, structural elements. I wouldn't give garden tours in winter though, and weeds, mosquitoes and japanese beetles are a problem in hot months of summer, but it's lovely the rest of the time. :-)

There's the danger of June being a premature ejaculation here, but if we don't get too excited and settle down for the long haul everyone ends up satisfied :)

Best wishes
Jon

Seems to put a different (but most likely not entirely new) spin on the entire concept of "rose", especially in regard to the matter of repeating (tangental to another recent thought of mine, being it seems the only roses really worth having are English-not sure whether that is due to my preference of the flower or the accent).

And what is your longest (run-on) sentence?