Betsy's Gardens

Welcome to my garden page!

I invite you to browse dozens of colorful, close-up photos of my gardens, individual flowers, and garden visitors below and to the left.  Wherever you see underlined words in a different color, there is a link to a photo, which will open in a new window.  Click "Back" to return to this page.

Click below to visit each year's garden snapshots.

The Gardens:
There are four main gardens in Betsy's kingdom:

Sunny South Bed
Color scheme:  Yellow & blue

I created this garden from scratch.  Click below to watch its evolution from weeds to wonderful:

Summer flowers:

Moonflower (opens by moonlight):

Spring flowers:

Shady North Bed
Color scheme:  Green, white, muted shades of pink and purple

Early autumn pictures (annuals):

Summer flowers:

Spring flowers:

Lava Rock Bed
Color scheme:  Yellow, red, orange

Summer flowers:

  Spring flowers:

West Bed
Color scheme:  Bold pinks & purples, white

Early autumn flowers:

Summer flowers:

Cosmos (blooms for months!):

Disco Belle Hibiscus:

Spring flowers:

Visits from wildlife 

Ratso enjoys supervising me when I'm tending to the garden, especially in the spring.  This has nothing to do with the desire to spend time with his "Mom" and everything to do with eating grass, which he loves:

Deck containers
We adore our deck.  We built it in 2003, and Kevin (a genius at carpentry) had the foresight to suggest including these beautiful flower boxes: 

      By now, if you have read ANYTHING on this site, you know that I am a color Nazi. So each year, the deck boxes have a color scheme. ("Of course they do," you're thinking). My dear friend Donna bought me some gorgeous glass watering bulbs in 2007, so I used the colors on these majestic orbs as my design scheme for the deck boxes that year. The colors: bluish purple, salmon orange, and white. You can see the glass bulbs in two of the photos below (the last two). One of them froze into the dirt in the deck boxes in the winter and I was too impatient to let it thaw out in the spring. Its stem broke when I tried to pull it out. I'm a damn fool!

2008 was the year of the pinks:

In my spare time, I love to play in the garden. I didn't start gardening until we moved to Munger Road in 1999.  I didn't really even have any interest in it; it just seemed like an awful lot of work.  Our old place on Edgewood was just a house--not a home, as the old expression goes.  But after I got started, it wasn't long before my OCD personality kicked in, and now I am obsessed.

In the column on the left, you can click to see pictures of photos from all of my gardens.  The right side of the page is a narrative on my gardening philosophy, mantras, and history.  (I also dabble in creative writing and journalism, so I couldn't possibly be satisfied with just a list; I am compelled to tell a story).

"Garden as though you will live forever."  - William Kent

The big picture

There are four main gardens in Betsy's kingdom:

I take lots of pictures of the shade garden in its entirety, because I created it from scratch.  It used to be part of the lawn, and since we have no substantial trees, it's my only area for shade plants.  It's a very therapeutic, comforting area for me, since I'm not a big fan of direct sunlight.  I am prone to sunburn, much like the hostas in the shade garden (har-dee-har-har):

2004 facing west	2005 facing west	2004 facing east	2005 facing east

Now that I think about it, I also created the south bed from scratch.  It's not therapeutic in the same way that the shade garden is, but I am nonetheless proud of having conceived and developed it.

"To create a little flower is the labour of ages."  -William Blake

This is my favorite picture of all my gardens.  Click here or on the photo to enlarge it.

"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust." - Gertrude Jekyll

My mom didn't do much gardening while I was growing up, so I learned the basics from books in the first year or two, and everything else from the school of hard knocks. Derek's mom, Carol, and my neighbor, Kathy, were also a big help. 

"A garden is half-made when it is well planned.  The best gardener is the one who does the most gardening by the winter fire."  - Liberty Hyde Bailey

This quote really sums me up.  For every hour I spend in the garden, I spend another hour journaling, reading gardening books, sketching or planning for the future.

 After six years of gardening, I still only know 1/100 as much as I'd like to learn!  

"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed."  - Walt Whitman

(Ok, maybe not the "sunrise" part so much).

This is my absolute favorite flower:  Gorgeous "Gerbera Daisy," which many people call "Gerber Daisy."  I think I love it so much because of its simplicity.  When little kids draw a flower, it looks something like this.  Everything about it is pure, unadulterated FLOWER.  Other personal favorites include fuchsia, lilac (oh, the fragrance!), celosia (funky!), lupine, hydrangea, and hyacinth (again, the fragrance).

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.  To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul." 
- Alfred Austin

Color Harmony

One thing I really focus on is color harmony.  All my gardens except one small patch (see below) have a specific color theme, and I stick to them pretty closely.  Not only is it visually pleasing to use complementary colors in each garden, but it also turns flower shopping into a fun challenge!  You have to find something that is not only the right color, but the right height and width with the same shade and soil tolerance, among other things.  I call it "hunting."  

Those who work with and cohabitate with me would agree that I'm a control freak, so each garden has its own color scheme, with only infrequent and accidental variation. This happens when something pops up that I wasn't expecting, or was misrepresented on the package. For example, this gladiolus was in a bag labeled "shades of yellow" so I planted it in the South Bed, whose color scheme is yellow and blue (click to enlarge):

A lovely flower, but not in my plan.  I clipped it and put it in a vase in the house with other matching pink flowers.  I have no objections to this color combination (carnation pink - lavender; two of my favorite colors, in fact), but I and I alone shall control the time and space in which all colors appear (every gardener has a bit of a God complex at times--no cause for alarm).

Color Scheme:  South
Bluish purple and yellow are wonderful together in the sunny south bed....and recently I've even thrown in some orange (pixie lily, red hot poker) for interest.  White, of course, goes with almost anything, so I use it in almost every garden.  Click any photo to enlarge:

Color Scheme:  West
Call me a horticultural separatist (if you like big words), but I like to keep all the delightful shades of pink and purple together, with splashes of white for balance.  This is the scheme in my west-side peony bed.  I hardly ever mix pink with yellow or orange (yuck).  I'm also very fond of flowers that feature white and pink on the same flower blossom, such as the hibiscus, phlox, columbine, and dianthus in the photos below.  Click any photo to enlarge:

Color Scheme:  Lava Bed
My "Lava Bed" features bold shades of yellow, orange, and red.  I started with this color scheme and named it because this bed originally had red lava rocks as mulch; we didn't quite understand the purpose of mulch at the time, and we picked out something that looked cool rather than something that would serve a specific purpose (a novice mistake that I have regretted--and been wrestling with--for years).  I've gradually excavated most of the lava rocks (as much as a wheelbarrow full each time I plant new things), but the color scheme is still prevalent:

"Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you."  -Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Color Scheme:  North
Finally, there's the north-side shade garden.  The colors here tend to be muted shades of pink and purple.  I've planted tons of hostas in this area (at least 10 different varieties).  

The northwest corner of the shade garden is the only place in my gardens where I've gradually started to mix all different colors.  In 2004 and before, the color scheme in the shade garden was pinks and whites.  But now, anything goes!  The control freak in me doesn't know what to do with herself!

"Glowing Embers" hydrangea

        
I planted this beautiful "Glowing Embers" hydrangea in July of 2002 (a $4 clearance item from Frank's, if I recall).  It bloomed that year, but then...I made another novice mistake...I cut back the stems.  After getting only two flowers in 2003, I read that flowers only grow on old wood, so I sort of screwed up its cycle.  I didn't touch it in 2004.  It produced gorgeous, healthy foliage in 2004 and 2005, but no flowers.  I was determined to get this bugger to bloom, so I aggressively fertilized it, and in 2006 I got some really beautiful flowers again.  See pictures in the column to the left.  In 2007, I only got 2 flowers despite frequent fertilization.  I know that acid will make it blue, but I actually want it to be pink, so that's not the issue.  Is acid required in its fertilizer too?  Should I be trimming it?  Click here if you are a hydrangea expert and can give me some advice!

"Gardeners instinctively know that flowers and plants are a continuum and that the wheel of garden history will always be coming full circle." -Francis Cabot Lowell

Shrubs
Shrubs are a vital part of any gardener's yard, but really--they're not terribly photogenic.  So I usually take just a picture of the shrubs just once a year to monitor their growth.  All shrubs, with the exception of one lone sand cherry on the northwest corner, are on the south side of the house.  You'll see here:  Vicary Privet / Boxwood "Green Mountain" / Barberry "Rose Glow" / Barberry "Golden Bonanza" / Wiegela (pronounced "why'-jee-luh") "Wine & Roses"

Landscaping
The one-acre lot on which our house sits is totally flat.  It severely lacked character when we moved here in 1999.  One of the first things we did, with careful guidance from Derek's mom (as we were total novices at the time), was dump a massive pile of dirt in the front yard.  We raked it smooth into a boomerang shape, planted some shrubs, covered it with weed blocker and mulch, and "voila."  It has 6 junipers and 6 spireas.  It's amazing how tiny they were back then:

The Back Yard

  When we first moved in, our back yard was a giant, serene corn field in the shadow of a strip of forest woodland.  It was utterly peaceful, quiet and heavenly.  On a nightly basis, we saw foxes, deer, pheasants, and even a coyote once or twice.  Here's how the backyard looked back then in the good ol' days:

But a devious, greedy builder bought the "not for sale" land from the farmer and shadily acquired approval for an easement that would essentially turn the lot into yet another subdivision.  His intentions were very clear.  After a few years, a legal battle over the easement, and our appearance at the Township Zoning Board meeting, our "compromise" was just one home on the 3.5-acre parcel instead of 10.  Suburbia moved in despite our best efforts. We still see plenty of wildlife (deer, foxes, turkeys, coyotes - which we'd rather NOT see, and the occasional pheasant), but it's not as peaceful and idyllic as it once was.