The other day,
Pam at Digging posted a great piece on leaving a garden to strangers--either moving on from a garden that you've begun or inheriting a planned landscape from a previous owner.
I've had a post on a similar subject swirling around in my brain for the past few weeks, ever since I made the mistake of looking at my old garden and house via
Google Maps Street View. If you've never done this before, Big Brother Google has photographed (in 360 degrees) many cities around the country. You can go to Google Maps, plug in an address and click on Street View. Or don't. You might not like what you see!
When John and I bought our first house together in Wisconsin, it looked like this:
So homely and bland our realtor discouraged us from buying it.
A year and a half later, here it is with a fresh coat of paint and the entire front yard converted to a native plant wilderness.
We removed all the grass, Japanese yews and the overgrown arbor vitae. This was my first yard, and it was rather frightening to do all of that. You can see the prairie phlox in bloom. Pale coneflower is stretching up through the green masses as well. If I were to do this over, I probably wouldn't have planted so many large woolly and wild things so close to the sidewalk, but gardening is a learning process, right?
When we sold the house, I made a comprehensive map of all the plants in the front yard and back. I hoped the new owner would appreciate the space. If not, I hoped he would at least call the
Wild Ones and tell them to come dig up all the wonderful natives.
Recently, I checked on the old place for nostalgia sake (via Big Brother Google) and it revealed to me a horror. (Full disclosure: I was actually prepared for what I saw, since a neighbor friend had long ago told us the new owner was up to no good in our old garden).
Ack! The new owner pulled out all the wonderful natives and put back the grass lawn! My aching back groaned in memory when I saw this image.
And, though the resolution on this image isn't that great, it looks like he replaced the nice wildflowers around the entry walk with terrible annuals. Gone is the wild geranium, first to bloom in the spring, the butterfly weed attracting monarchs, and the phlox that filled the air with sweet scent. No more rattlesnake master, beebalm and prairie dropseed (which, by the way, I think is the most beautiful native grass ever. It smells like buttered popcorn in bloom).
Of course, I too change things when I move to a new house. There are probably old owners that cringe when they drive by (or Google ogle) and see my handiwork on the gardens they once tended with care. Alas! The lesson for me, I think, it to enjoy my garden while I have it and to be thankful for folks (like the young couple Pam consulted with) that appreciate the work that we gardeners do...
