One garden, several years, and a few questionable decisions.
I’m going to start with the least flattering photo. This photo is at least ten years old and probably taken on an iPod.
It would be tempting to introduce this garden at its best: everything in bloom, the bare patches conveniently out of frame. But this is the first entry in The Garden Gazette, and I think we should get to know each other properly.
So here it is. The beginning.
I started gardening when I was around eight. Of everything I’ve planted at my parents’ house, the garden you’ll see in these photographs is my favorite. But to tell its story properly, I have to start with another garden—and a neighbor named Debby.
Long before I was looking to Pinterest or Instagram for inspiration, I was looking down the street. Debby had a beautiful, lush perennial garden that climbed the big hill in front of her house. I remember thinking, quite simply: I need a garden like that.
One rainy Sunday after church, I came home, gathered a few leftover annuals my mom had bought for her pots, and started planting on a small hill beside the road.
I was elated.
The color scheme made absolutely no sense. The spot got plenty of shade, and I’d chosen mostly sun-loving flowers. The layout looked like a dog’s breakfast. But it was mine.
Every year, that little garden got a bit better. A little more planning, a little more intention. Debby even donated some Stargazer lilies, which still bloom on the property today. I love that a piece of the garden that inspired me became part of my own.
Eventually, though, I wanted more room. The soil was rocky, the shade wasn’t going anywhere, and I had ambitions that were beginning to exceed my small roadside plot.
I found a new spot in the yard: roughly three times the size, with plenty of sun.
I was in love. The plants had yet to arrive.
Looking through the photographs now, I can see my taste developing alongside the garden. Some decisions held up beautifully. Others have photographic evidence against them. At the time, of course, I thought each version was wonderful.
That’s one of my favorite things about these pictures. I remember the excitement of what I’d just planted, even when I look at it now and would do something differently. I was working toward a picture in my head that I didn’t yet know how to make. T
he garden gave me somewhere to figure it out.
After beginning with an assortment of annuals, I started investing in perennials. In went a big hydrangea and a border of daylilies. With plants returning each year, I could watch how their relationships changed: which ones filled out, which needed more space, where a little height made a difference.
My eye became more particular. My ability to leave the garden center empty-handed did not improve.
Over time, the garden grew fuller, more generous, a little less concerned with staying neatly within its boundaries. It began to resemble the place I’d been imagining. Here is a photo from 2020. I was particularly proud of it this year.
So much of the Joe Gardens sensibility took root in that patch of yard: the color, the abundance, the fondness for a stem that wanders a little. When I make an arrangement today, I’m often looking for a feeling I first found there—that lovely moment when separate things begin to belong together.
The photographs tell that story better than I could on my own. There are awkward stages, bare patches, and plants that haven’t yet grown into the space I promised they would fill. There are also the later years, when that early optimism finally starts to look justified.
I’m glad I kept pictures of all of it. The earliest ones make me laugh (and cringe), but they remind me how much pleasure there was in making something before I was especially good at it.
I don’t live at home anymore, but the flowers still return. The perennials grow larger, their roots reaching further into the place where I grew up. Each summer, something I began as a child carries on without needing me quite so much.
I still love this garden most. Partly for what it’s become, and partly because I remember every version that came before.
Welcome to The Garden Gazette. It felt right to let you in through this gate first.