A Healthy Dose of Spring Fever

I know you all are with me on this one… enough winter, right? Let’s bring on spring greens and sunshine! Lately, completely out of the blue, I’ve been obsessing over some beautiful gardens. To be honest, I can never remember a time in my life where I desired to do landscaping work of any kind… My thought was, “if I decorate inside, things will stay that way, if I decorate outside, I will have to deal with the weather, and weeds and so many unpredictable elements!”

Silly, I know, because now I am dreaming of luscious raised garden beds full of tomatoes, and a cutting garden where I grow peonies and roses, and hydrangeas that line my (imaginary) front porch. As I perused the garden inspiration section on Pinterest this week, I realized that just like interior decorating, garden decorating comes in many different styles. Although I couldn’t find a good site that named the different garden styles very well (If you know of one, please let me know!)

But, I did conclude that if I had a garden style I think the following words would sum it up: symmetrical, classic with modern lines, simple, large scale. I am totally in love with the idea of raised garden beds. And not only are they beautiful, they are very practical! You can plant your plants closer together which helps choke out weeds, because you never need to walk in your beds and pack down the soil.

I think I would have one rasied bed for a vegetabel garden and one for a cutting garden. There are so many beautiful flowers that I would love to constantly have available for arrangements. But, if I had to choose only a few… Peonies would top my list, they are big, bold, and beautiful, and not too difficult to grow (so I hear anyways). I would love english garden roses as well, but somehow roses sound intimidatingly hard to grow….

I really know nothing (I mean zilch) about gardening, except what I’ve read this week in my newfound garden obsession. But, I’ve been learning a bunch of neat stuff (that you never really how true it is because you read it on the internet…). For instance, supposedly there are tricks to getting tulips to be perrenials instead of annuals. I know it’s possible: as a child, I remember there were three tulips that came up dutifully every year underneath our birch tree.

There is something about a row of hydrangeas flanking a home or porch that just seems so warm and inviting. And oh, what I would give to have this driveway, lined with potted hydrangeas… I’m pretty sure this is the perfect driveway (totally impractical though, as Jake dutifully pointed out 😉 ) But, perfect nevertheless.

My interests do go beyond flowers though… believe it or not. I also can’t resist a good boxwood or two. I like them better in their natural, untrimmed, form I think. There is something about their leaves and how Greek they look or something… (call me crazy, it’s ok I know I make no sense)

And, let’s be honest, who can resist a little moss now and then. I love how the beautiful green color creeps over our manmade concrete, brick and stone. I’ve even read about a kind of moss-like plant called stepables that thrives on foot traffic. Can you say, goodbye lawnmower… hello, soft, mossy lawn??? 😉

Anyways, I don’t think it’s just me who has caught the garden bug. It’s just that time of year (especially this year) that we’re all craving a little more green and sunshine. Besides, half the fun of all this is the dream, am I right?? Well I have my one-day, future garden all dreamed up, folks! And let me tell ya… I’m seeing peonies!!! 😉