Into the Dirt (Part 1)

Bare ground, a rarity in garden

The last few days since returning from Pennsylvania, I have been digging out plants and composting them. A plant here, a plant there, to whole planting areas. barberries, rudbeckia nitidia, beebalms, brown-eyed Susans; I like to think of it as editing. Too much is too much.

I have often heard the maxim, "Learn what grows good for you and grow a lot of it." When a gardener first begins this is not bad advice. At a certain point, though, you are no longer a beginning gardener, but something more. It is this something more that drives me at this point in my gardening journey.

I will confess I am a plant collector. The very nature of this statement makes garden design difficult. Finding "the repeat" with different plants or a unifying line to draw the eye can be a challenge.