Northern Georgia, US zone 8A.
I’ve posted our garden before, but I was encouraged to post again this summer as it’s grown!
We began our garden in September of 2021 after having moved in a few months before. The lawn was a patchy mix of weeds, grass, dirt, moss, and standing water in one corner whenever it would rain- making a lovely home for mosquitos.
My mom was a master gardener, so I had learned a lot from her by helping her in her own perennial garden growing up. I knew I wanted something different than just lawn because of a.) purely aesthetic reasons and b.) so many articles coming out about the benefits of reducing lawn and introducing natives.
My own garden is mostly for aesthetic purposes (I really love English and cottage gardens), but I make sure to throw a few natives into each section of the garden as well, and avoid aggressive invasive plants. For instance, sterile buddleja varieties don’t spread in my area, but I’m constantly battling English ivy and periwinkle my predecessor planted.
The garden is half sun/half shade being surrounded by large oaks. We’re lucky enough to have lots of towering white oaks, southern red oaks, post oaks, and water oaks.
We added the brick pathway and arbor last year to give the garden a bit of structure visually. Plus I’m growing roses and jasmine to grow up the arbor.
My biggest gardening challenges have been deer pressure (we live in a small city/college town but our house backs up to a nature preserve so the deer love it here), and red clay soil (it’s so easy for a plant to get root rot here if you don’t research and plant correctly).
My biggest gardening challenges win is that we no longer get standing water. In the southeast we get massive downpours of rain – combine that with incredibly dense clay soil, and that used to leave standing water for days in one section of the yard.
As far as arguments against going full garden- I hear people say all the time that kids and dogs need lawn to play. Well, as someone who grew up in the woods with only a garden, I played outside all of the time and did just fine without lawn. Also my dogs, featured in some of the photos (the older brown dog has passed away last summer), don’t seem to be missing out on anything. We play fetch and chase all of the time. I’ve trained my remaining dog not to pee on or trample plants, so he uses the garden like an obstacle course.
Thanks to every who contributes to this sub- it’s my favorite place to get inspiration and motivation!
by 3BroomsticksBitch
13 Comments
Nice work…love the natural retreat you created
Goodness gracious.
Looks great! All that hard work paying off!
Root rot…. When I see magical gardens like this, I wish I lived in an area that I wouldn’t have to worry about water. Im in the intermountain west desert where water is precious and pretty much everything needs to be irrigated/watered. But I can see that too much water can also be an issue. Stilllll, it’s soooo magical and beautiful!
How pretty! It looks so good, really love the way you’ve done this.
Beautiful!! Did you plant the clover yourself or was it already there? Interested in growing clover but I read so many conflicting things about its viability.
As a Brit, this garden feels very familiar – lots of plants we grow over here. I do like a shady garden. Looks brilliant!
gorgeous.
also, can I hear more about the poodle?
Delightful!
This is absolutely delightful.
So gorgeous!
Beautiful yard, adds a nice sense of privacy as well. Cute dog too!
So beautiful! Would you mind sharing a bit about your process? Did you develop one big plan for it or figure it out as you went along?