Anyone who has a garden comes, at the very least, to accept change. When we’re fortunate, we come to value it. Over the past 8 years I’ve watched great growth and development here at Poison Ivy Acres as I’ve created new gardens and watched them fill in. Now I’m at the stage where I’m tweaking what was first planted and correcting mistakes. And there are always mistakes.

For example…

Here is the “dry garden” up by the road. My thought was to plant things up by the road that would only need watering every four weeks if it doesn’t rain. So far this has been a success. I planted daylilies, Baptisia, variegated Yucca, Physocarpus (‘Summer Wine’ and ‘Coppertina’, aster ‘Raydon’s Favorite,’ Miscantus ‘Morning Light,’ ‘Moonlight’ yarrow and Asclepias tuberosa.

Here is how this area looked in late July of 2014. The yellow-foliage shrub at the left is a ‘Golden Times’ Forsythia. Here and there are self-seeded Verbascum.

This is how the fragrance garden looked in our first year, 2008. We tilled under all the grass that was there when we bought the house, worked in lots of composted horse manure, and mulched the area to keep the weeds down. Not too attractive, but ready to plant!

And here is that same area in 2014 – we added onto the existing patio with “patchwork” rocks and pavers, and planted an assortment of perennials, shrubs and annual plants.

I’m thinking about change right now because I’m about to close out this blog. No, I won’t stop blogging, but like gardeners, writers occasionally decide to tear up what they’ve planted and start again.

This month I’ll be moving all my on-line work to GardenLady.com. With the help of Terry Gavin I’m refreshing and redesigning my main website and putting all my efforts there. I’ll let you all know when the move has been completed. In the meantime, I hope you’ll stick with me as I move on with renewed energy and purpose. Together, we’ll continue cultivating the gardening revival.

Change? Yes, indeed….