Garden in the spring

Those who know me know I am an avid gardener. I don't have a boat, I don't have a second home, I don't play golf. Instead, I garden. So welcome to my garden....

I call my garden an 'American cottage garden'. The cottage garden is an English tradition - a nation of gardeners if there ever was one! But not the formal, neatly trimmed and highly organized garden of the upper class - no, a cottage garden is one that a poor dirt farmer put in in front of his little stone cottage with the thatched roof. For a great read on cottage gardening, try "The Cottage Garden" by Christopher Lloyd and Richard Bird. They say it better than I can: "The essence of a cottage garden...is a bountiful yet regulated informality. It has evolved through common sense, combines need with enjoyment and is entirely unpretentious."

If my garden has a structure, it is one that encourages the visitor to wander, and then to stop and enjoy. So it has mulched paths that go off in all directions - you can pick - and then you enter a space that is like a 'room' in the garden, and usually there is a chair or bench or good place to sit for a minute. It's a bit more rambling than your typical English cottage garden - I am, after all, an American! - and you can go from sun to shade and from the vegetable garden into the perennials into the woodland garden (which is new and still under construction.)

How can you talk about a garden without pictures? Here are some spots you might like...