Good Morning! My husband and I are both from up north, I am from NH but I've lived in VA for most of my life; R is from Long Island. We met in Boston and wandered our way south together. We had our own web design biz until R was offered a job with salary and benefits. So, we relocated one more time! our first sight of future home ( photo / image / picture from CrisGzr's Garden ) Five years later we found our dream home. It featured one acre of manicured gardens, 3 acres of woods and a 750 foot screen room over the carport. We spent the entire summer sitting in the screen room with our two dogs, watching nature evolve. The next year we had acquired two more dogs and R took up dryland mushing. The gardens were becoming less rigid, the azaleas were becoming less rigid and we preferred the change. I had difficulty weeding after what I thought were weeds turned into flowers like Columbine, Echinacea and Bee Balm. Intimidating surprises like several thousand daffodills, lily of the valley, bleeding heart, japanese painted ferns and many many varieties of hostas! The previous owner was a remarkable gardener. She planted several native gardens and a had started a few wonderful surprise areas. Now, at year four my explorations have resulted in massive overgrowth worthy of an Amazonian Rainforest! Last year, we attempted to gain control and made some progress. But were obviously over our heads. My husband started hating the house, preferring to be gamer at home, rather than manual labor for my projects. This year we decided to tackle the entire yard by dividing it into rooms, taking one 'room' at a time. After killing and or being killed by many of my purchased plants, I conned my husband into using the plants we have or have found and relocating them into low maintenance areas. I started a blog to document our progress or good intentions. And since web design and blogging are my passion, I conned myself into a project that required I plan and complete each garden. The down-side as you might see on the ID this Plant section, I get side-tracked by researching mystery weeds. I have been going through 10,000+ photos documenting our lives and watched the progress of nature as she reclaimed our land. The most important lesson I noticed is obviously -every single hour spent working in the spring is worth 4 or 5 hours in the summer trying to get control. I am hoping to learn a lot more lessons from you experienced gardeners and I hope we can regain that loving feeling for our home again! that's me in a long rambling intro! Cris
Welcome, CrisGzr, to The Garden Stew, where you'll find plenty of helpful and empathetic folks.. Hank
Welcome to GardenStew, Cris. You'll find lots of help around here. My husband and I bought our very first home last year, but the most we had to deal with was a runaway sage and a neglected lawn. Looking forward to hearing more from you.
We're happy to have you here at GardenStew Cris and hope that you'll soon be as addicted to our forums as we all are. WELCOME from Scotland. :-D
Thank you everyone, to be honest, the house looks quite different now! So much has changed in the 30 years the previous owners where gardening. I have two patches of irises that don't bloom due to the deep shade they are in now! A lilac I found in a patch of lilies of the valley and under a huge Azalea, also no blooms or sun! It took us a while to stop seeing the gardens as theirs and not ours. I guess we needed the weeds to make it ours LOL I am having fun finding treasures everywhere. In the back we have a cleared area under a phone and gets lots of sun, I want to plant some blueberries... it's near the dog's yard and the deer aren't fond of Siberian Huskies ;-) Anyway, I am looking forward to getting to know everyone and change my terrible plant history to successes.
Welcome to the stew! I empathize with the angst of dealing with an old yard. We've been in our home almost 30 years and the changes have been consistent and radical over the years. It has gone from sun drenched to total shade because of evergreens planted by neighbors on the south side of our lot. Your idea of taking on one outdoor room at a time is excellent. Even with a city lot there is no way I could begin to maintain the yard if I didn't deal with one room at a time. Can't wait to see more photos of your gardens. They sound lovely.
Welcome to the Stew, Cris, from the rather cold, wet coast of northwestern Norway. That's a lovely home! I enjoyed reading about your garden. Good luck with making it exactly like you want it.
Hi & Welcome CrisGzr, you have a beautiful home with lots of land. Work with it and everything will fall in place, need help or a solution we are here!
Hi Cris, welcome to GardenStew where ideas pop up all the time and the friendliest gardeners on the internet are ready to add a helping hand. As you read through the posts you will find us scattered around the globe with a variety of environments and settings. Our gardens are active somewhere in the world affording us the opportunity to enjoy members gardens year round. Forums, gardens, blogs and the plant DB keep us busy, informed and entertained, we hope you enjoy our group, welcome aboard. Jerry
Chris--A big warm welcome from Wisconsin. I agree with Jerry's assement of this wonderful online gardening community. I love a work in process and finding all those unexpected treasure you have been uncovering. Looking forward to more photo's.
