Designing A Perfect Garden
Landscaping has challenged me tremendously. In my quest to figure out what to do for our space I read several books on landscaping (standard, edible, and permaculture), read dozens of internet articles, and searched high and low for inspiration online.
The majority of information that I found started out the same “what theme do you want for your garden?” “what is your color palate?” And every time I came across that I would turn my head to the side like a confused puppy. My theme is to grow food and have a space for pollinators and my color palette is whatever color I like. That didn’t seem to be what those articles and books were expecting.
In the end I’ve come to a conclusion that it really doesn’t matter what is out there. The important thing is what you want out of the space. You can have inspiration from other garden spaces, we most definitely do. But it wasn’t until we opened the door and allowed ourselves to no longer be constrained by what inspired us that the space started to become what we wanted.
The questions I asked myself were the following:”What do I want this space to provide?” “How do I want to feel when I’m in this space?” “How can I optimize this space to include everything that I want in it?” “Do I want it to change with the seasons?” “How will this space work for a young child?”
After that I started to narrow down on my responses: “What kinds of flowers do I want?” “What colors make me happy?” “What fruit trees and shrubs do we want?”
Figuring out those parts are the biggest hurdles and the most fun ones.
“Allowing yourself room to breathe and step out of the box of what’s traditionally done was a big deal for us.”
Allowing ourselves room to breathe and step out of the box of what’s traditionally done was a big deal for us. It had felt overwhelming and frustrating when we read books and articles talking about what plants to use for certain styles of garden or what color palettes to go with if you liked a certain style. It just felt incredibly limiting, almost suffocating. It made me feel like I had to toe a fine line between what I wanted and what I was supposed to do. For me at least that’s when I start to feel frustrated because I’m doing something that I don’t love simply because it’s expected.
There were so many times that I just wanted to peel my gardening gloves off and quit but fortunately what helped was us sitting down and really talking through the above questions and figuring out what we want from the space.
Our gardening spaces is separated into four areas: the backyard, the courtyard, the front yard, and the park strip pollinator garden. I will be doing a separate post on each of these areas in the coming months and really going into detail about how the layout was chosen and what plants we ended up using and why.
I will also be posting updates of these areas on our Instagram (@thecuriousnook) so be sure to check that out as well.
Until next time,
