Recently, the color of our home changed from a drab yellow to a brilliant bright white and accented with black shutters. I think we’ve managed to cultivate the perfect backdrop for future pictures of the seasonal flowers from my cottage garden.
Cultivating my cottage garden
My goal was to use our 1840’s farmhouse as a backdrop to weave the story of gardening, my home-based business, and my hobbies. But, I felt that the color of our home needed to be a bit more reflective of my design style which is simple, natural, with a vintage flair. Plus, the white is also a natural background for my photography as it creates a more suitable backdrop behind the garden.
It took the whole summer to paint the house, and for that year I didn’t set foot in the garden. The plants all grew wild. This is the year that instead of working hard at controlling the garden I allowed it to just be. And you know what developed? A loose and natural patches which lead me to question the reason why I as a gardener kept working so hard to control the garden in a design style that kept me enslaved to by spending money and time I had little off.
This is the season when I realized that maybe I had outgrown the image literally for the perfectly maintained English country garden I so had adored as a child. My tastes had changed and it was now coming to a head.
Don’t get me wrong I think those gardens are beautiful, but I honestly can not afford the upkeep that comes with such a painstakingly manicured border. So, next year I will allow more plants to grow that are carefree and those that are fussy can die out if they choose.
I guess what I learned is it’s ok to change and not hold on so tight to an idea from the past. Nature is always carefree as we should be in life.