Garden Friday! Julie Steals Garden Ideas

Walking the neighborhood and poaching good ideas!

Julie Steals Garden Ideas

by Julie Carpenter
 





​I moved into a new house in April.  I have done a few things around the yard. I’ve dug up some flowering peaches that were, sadly, in the wrong place and planted a few low-growing radicans gardenias instead, underplanted with June bearing and ever bearing strawberries. I also threw some seeds in the ground, cleaned out some beds, removed some awkward brick circles filled with irises that won’t bloom due to lack of sun and being buried too deep, and pruned dead branches. 
 
I know that a lot of people move in somewhere and immediately have big garden ideas. I’m not those people. I need time to see how I feel about the garden and how it feels about me. I like to take the time to see if it offers me any gifts. I wait for bulbs and perennials to show themselves, for shrubs I don’t recognize to bloom. My new place might have garden ideas of its own. I don’t make garden decisions quickly. I also need time to steal garden ideas from my neighbors, a practice I highly recommend.

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Why steal ideas from your neighbors? Of course, you can go to your local garden center, or look up information on the internet about what grows well in your area. And, of course, there’s always that plant lust for the plant that isn’t quite meant to grow where you live. I get it. Go ahead and gamble now and then. Find a spot for the prima donna rose that hates humidity, look up how to make your own organic spray, and steel yourself for tragedy. But fill most of your garden with happy plants that don’t fight for your attention. This is where stealing garden ideas comes in. Your neighbors live right in your little ecosystem, and what grows in their gardens will likely grow in yours. In addition, you can actually see what that plant that you love, the one that looks so enticing on the page of the garden catalog, will look like on the ground, in front of someone’s house. Will that holly that looks so cute and innocent in the five-gallon pot reach over the sidewalk and grab people by the leg? Will the beautiful weeping red Japanese Maple that you planted between the two front windows spread out and make your open living/dining area look like a cave most of the year? Will the carefree wonder rose you planted by your mailbox be the source of year-round cursing by your mail carrier? Scratching them as they put your mail in the box and attracting bees during the spring and summer?
 
There are lots of reasons to snoop around and take a look at your neighborhood gardens, all of them! The good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Here’s the patented Julie Carpenter Method of stealing great garden ideas.

Walk while you gawk– That rhymed. I wonder if I can do that with all the headings?  It sounds like an awful lot of trouble. Don’t get your hopes up. Anyhoo, if at all possible, you should walk through the neighborhood when stealing garden ideas. Yes, you can get a quick idea when driving, but you can’t get the full effect. Plants have scents and even sounds, like rustling grasses or the pleasant humming of bees in blossoms. You might find your neighbors out in their yards and you can ask if they know the variety of that wonderful gardenia with the big waxy flowers that you haven’t seen before. You also don’t want to curb your car slowing down to take in a beautiful apricot rose sitting in dappled shade in the golden sunlight of the morning. Not that such a thing has ever happened to me.

Put your stolen garden ideas in writing – You can also record them on your phone. Just be careful taking pictures. If your neighbors are out, you might want to ask so that they don’t think you’re being creepy. Being creepy is not going to score you a cutting of that bridal wreath spirea you’re lusting for. I either take a notebook or write down what I remember when I get home. For whatever reason, people think you’re a harmless goofball when you stop to write at the side of the street and a stalker when you take pictures. Although, I’ve been known to sneak a careful picture now and then.

Make friends with your neighbors –  Speak to your neighbors. I mean the ones with the oak leaf hydrangea that has the suckers underneath. Or the ones whose daylilies obviously need to be separated. Maybe they need help and you could do a little gardening in return for some free plants! People who are out puttering around their gardens are generally pretty nice! Go for it. I mean, say hi first…maybe compliment them, and ask about varieties. Feel things out. Maybe don’t show up with a shovel the first time you meet them and start edging into their yards. But be friendly, ask about the garden and then eventually…who knows? You may end up with any number of free plants that look great and grow well in your neighborhood.

Go for different reasons in different seasons – (I had one more rhyme in me. You’re welcome). Spring and summer are good for scoping out plant varieties. In fall and winter, you’re not so blown away by color and blossoms, and you can see the structure of the garden more clearly. Keep these things in mind as you’re snooping.

• Spring – In the spring, I’m just blown away by the flowers. I want all of them, of course,  but since that’s not possible, I try to note which flowers do well. Here in my neighborhood, early spring is the season of camellias (more about them in fall and winter too) and then the azaleas come in bloom. There are also dogwoods and other flowering trees and shrubs to take in. I get that some of us want to be different. Trust me, I’m no stranger to doing my own thing, but if you love flowers, it just makes sense to plant a number of the ones that knock it out of the park in your area. I also try to pull myself out of my flower daze long enough to note how the colors work with the color of the house and the other flowers around them. Does that pink make a nice contrast with the gray brick? Does the white azalea fade into the white house, making it hard to see? (Also note that when white azaleas fade, they look like sodden, wadded up Kleenex. Will this stop me from getting one? No. But I will think about how to move someone’s attention from it as the blooms fade). I also look for good accent blossoms and colors, the most beautiful flowering trees and shrubs, and take note of locations where they appear to be thriving, always keeping the location of the sun in mind.
• Summer – Summers can be tough on plants and not every plant wants to bloom in the summer. This is the time to look for summer colors, annuals, and tough sun-tolerant plants, at least where I live.  Hydrangeas and gardenias rule my neighborhood and look good doing it, but they need morning sun or dappled shade in the afternoon. I see daylilies in amazing colors and a variety of shapes, and daisies and echinacea used to good effect. I also like to note which plants attract hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. Butterfly bushes and butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa) are gorgeous plants that look good while they attract pollinators. I also see which annuals my neighbors use and where they look good. Sadly, I notice mistakes too – plants that couldn’t handle planter boxes, tiny annuals that can’t be seen from a distance, hydrangeas with burned leaves that get some angle of afternoon sun. 
• Autumn – The fall is the last gasp for color before everything but the evergreens get naked. There are some flowers that bloom into the autumn. I’ve noticed some lovely fall-blooming camellias in my neighborhood, and I will be looking for a spot for one! (Camellias probably deserve their own post later. They are wonderful plants.) There’s a variety of yellow rose that one of my neighbors has that’s still blooming its head off with huge cabbage shaped roses and the foliage is perfect! I hope to see that neighbor in their yard because I really need to know the variety of that plant. I look to see which plants provide fall foliage color as well. Dogwoods and Japanese Maples are good examples of trees that are just as beautiful in the fall as any other season.  Of course, I see pots full of chrysanthemums start thinking about colors I want. (This year, I went out toward the end of the chrysanthemum season and just took what I could get…oh well…it makes the selection process easier.) It’s this time of year that I can start to get past the flower high and see how the gardens’ layouts are working too. I like curved corner beds and trees planted so they arch into openings that lead the eye to the entrance of the house. Unfortunately, I also notice gardens that aren’t working so well, but I can use that information too. I note which foundation plants overwhelm porches and note that some small trees or rangy oak leaf hydrangeas grow over windows. I make a mental note to avoid such bad garden ideas! (I’m cutting back some foundation plantings that I inherited in the new place already! I don’t want to make more work.)
• Winter – In the winter, I love to walk around and watch the trees sleeping. Even though their limbs are bare, trees come into their own in the winter. You notice things about them that you never have before, beautifully peeling bark, gnarled branches. You notice plants that otherwise took a backseat in the summer, plants like red-twig dogwood shrubs or tall brown grasses that not only look like elegant ghosts of summers past, they rustle in the wind or when birds land on them adding haunting winter sound effects. There are plants that bloom in winter, particularly in the south. Pansies are the annuals of choice, and they can bloom through most of the winter. There are camellias – those three season garden queens – that bloom at the end of winter and the mysterious and Doctor Seuss-y witch hazel trees that bloom late winter as well. I’ve seen forsythia blooming as early as late January! There are perennials and bulbs that will come up and give you hope at the end of winter too, crocus are the first flowers to poke their little heads above the earth and then some brave varieties of daffodils will bloom right through the snow. This is the time of year you come to appreciate that blue-green fir tree in someone’s back yard, the one you hardly knew was there in the spring when the Azaleas were dazzling you with a kaleidoscope of color. Though winter may not be your favorite season in the garden, it’s nice to have some plants that come into their own when everything else is sleeping. 

Final thoughts on stealing garden ideas
 
Your garden can be as individual and creative as a painting or a poem, but the art form is more dependent on context than any other. Sharing/poaching garden ideas is a good way to make sure that your garden is a happy one that fits into its ecosystem. Do some research to make sure that none of the plants you decide to purchase or divide are invasive, but otherwise, look around to see what plants will be healthy and happy in your backyard.  It’s the one time stealing will probably work out in your favor and add to the community spirit.

Bio – 
 
Julie graduated from Tennessee Weslyan with a BA in English Literature, and she has an MA from University of Memphis in Professional Writing. She was accepted to the Writer’s Hotel in 2016 and 2017, serving as as a teaching assistant in 2017. Julie is a Pushcart nominee for “Letter to Essie” in the New Guard Anthology VII, and has published four stories at Fiction on the Web. She will have a short story collection , Things Get Weird in Whistlestop, published with Poetic Justice Press later this year. She is currently working on a novel called “Last Train Out of Hell.” She can often be found blogging here on the Sacred Chickens website along with her cats, Uncle Morty and Jarad. (Actually,  the cats don't blog. They're amazingly lazy.)
 
 

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