Going to extremes

This morning we visited a nearby garden as part of the Australian Open Garden Scheme. I read about it in a local newspaper and thought it looked quite interesting, in an 'English Cottage Garden' way. The owners have won many awards over the years and are great plant collectors, which in my opinion, was the garden's downfall.

It was on a reasonable sized corner block and almost every centimetre of space was filled with plants - decidious trees, ornamental fruit trees, camellias, over 300 roses (not in flower yet), shrubs, perennials, bulbs, annuals and vegetables. In fact, if it can be classified as a plant, then I'm sure it's in that garden. All of the nature strip and the entire block - front, back and sides - had been planted with thousands of plants, with very narrow winding paths throughout.

There were some magnificent camellias, but the majority of trees and shrubs were so densely planted that nothing could be seen to its best advantage, and indeed, many were distorted and drastically pruned due to lack of space. The garden would be lovely and shady during the summer months, but overall I found it so disappointing that I didn't even take any photos.

I'm sure the owners love it, and they've certainly put in a lot of work, but I felt quite stifled and overwhelmed by it all. I did see many things that I would like to grow, but not crammed 'cheek by jowl' with everything else.

However, I better not be too critical as this afternoon, after mulching the most recent plantings in the new section of garden at home, I counted the plants. Excluding all the pansies, tulips, calendula and ornamental grasses around the edge of the garden bed, there are still 89 plants in there!!! I'm well-prepared to remove some of the in-fill plants as the shrubs grow (I think....lol), but it will be interesting to see how it looks as they begin to grow a little more.

Richard pulling up self-sown Sycamore Maple seedlings to repot on the deck.

Up the garden path...

and down again.

I decided not to turn the remaining dirt heaps into a 'wildflower meadow' of flowers and weeds and ripped the lot out yesterday.

HELP, please.......can anyone tell me how to reply to comments on my blog directly under a particular comment? Or do I just have to be lucky enough see a comment and reply before the next one appears? (Tanya - you seem to be able to do it very well, but I know you are using Wordpress. Perhaps it doesn't work with Blogger?)