Recently, my husband and I were forced to plunge ahead and replace the liner in our pool.
Every year since the leak started we would patch it up and hope for the best. Unfortunately, this year we were forced to take the plunge and replace it entirely. We also accepted the fact that this project was likely to be borne at a significant expense and reluctantly moved ahead with its replacement which, in turn, lead to multiple other “adjustments” to our garden.
The dream to create a more visually organized plot in which I would grow food and flowers for my family was now beginning to take shape.
It presented the perfect opportunity to have the whole garden re-evaluated and create different rooms as any well designed garden should be.
At this point my ego needed to step aside and stop thinking that I could do this all on my own. I needed the assistance from someone that I could work closely with and assist me in creating the vintage country garden that best suited our home and life style.
I strongly believe in collaboration. It’s huge in achieving any major goals. Combining thoughts and ideas helps to make any dynamic project a success.
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I consider myself to be a knowledgeable
“Plantswoman” in the garden.
My “hands on” experience in many gardens I’ve tended, chatting with friends who freely volunteered advice and countless hours reading gardening books, has helped me to get to this point.
However, there comes a time when a keen plan, or a road map, is needed. Therefore, the presence of a trained professional observer is a “must.”
To achieve this goal, I recruited a landscape architect who could help organize the whole plot, complete with measurements, an eye for symmetry and ratios to a totally non-symmetrical house. In other words, to help refine the rooms I initially created by giving them more definition to help serve their purpose with the appropriate flow from one to the next and, subsequently, a more defined relationship to the house.
The Vintage Garden.
In the vegetable garden the most important design element to change was the way in which the vegetables were grown. To increase productivity, minimize weeding time and direct watering, we agreed that boxes would provide the solution. Six 6’4″ boxes were built to hold many of the new vegetable plants.
This year I managed to plant cucumbers, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, potato, eggplant, lettuce, beets, squash, carrots,zucchini, fennel, onions, beans, tomatoes, blueberries,raspberries, apples and pears. Most self contained easy to weed and a bit less accessible to all the bunnies.
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Learning from choices that at the time seemed like a good idea is a part of life.
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Let me explain.
The patio you see bellow is the entrance from the street to a mud room and my studio.
I attempted a do-it-yourself project to save some money and hired laborers to lay down the stone, under my supervision, What did I know? Well, not enough, they had no clue either and as a result for three years I lived with a complete mess and a costly choice.
The Patio
The Court Yard
Now, thanks to the expertise of Jim Osborn our new landscaper and his crew, the land is pitched with stones laid correctly which include three new beds.
This courtyard room is solely planted with herbs. Now beautiful herbs fill this newly designed space making it welcoming, cozy and a pleasure. I particularly love this room in the morning, all the birds come to visit while they stop to sip water or gather seeds from the feeders.
#BrimfieldFinds
The pool
It was important for us to keep the old world look to the new pool area and not have it become the focal point of the garden.
More importantly, it was to become a room which provided sophisticated tranquillity. Few materials were needed to reflect the old world charm in a house of this era like bluestone for the surround combined with a grey liner to create the effect of stone and a simple grass edge.
Not bad for the first season in the “Vintage Garden.” Great fun to collaborate with such fantastic people and to see it evolve into a dream come true.