serialplantfetishist's photostream  

I am interested in documenting my garden and the way I see it. It has been delightful to discover so many other gardens and gardeners on flickr.

I've been making this garden since about 1993 and its the only garden I've ever made. My innitial interest in gardening here was for the sake of enhancing the landscape as habitat for birds and insects. In part, I've placed plants to create 'verge' areas or transitional zones between open areas and 'wooded' areas to make it more appealing to birds. Grouping plants by water needs is necessary here in drought-prone California. I find I lean toward making a garden which feels like plausibly natural landscape though I appreciate looking at many kinds of gardens.

The design process has consisted of acting on bouts of inspiration interspersed by periods of living in it and noticing how the garden feels to be in throughout the year.

Early on I decided not to create a particular kind of garden. It isn't deliberately a 'cottage' or a 'wildlife' or a 'natural' or a 'Mediiterrainean' garden, but there are aspects of my garden which are like each of these. In places my garden is inspired by the gardens I've visited, most notably the Harland Hand garden www.harlandhandgarden.com/ in El Cerito.

While I've worked on lots of projects here over the years, I've probably spent more hours in the garden just looking at it, reading in it, playing with the dogs, napping or drinking tea. Too many non-gardeners seem to have the impression that gardening is all about toil. Some have asked if I ever sit down. I like to answer that I do that all the time, but only until the urge to 'play' some more becomes too strong.