Weekly Photo Challenge: New

Patience is a virtue, we gardeners remind ourselves. Nothing tests that quality like the installation of a new garden:

Taking on a one-hundred year old house means learning to love renovations. Or at least accept them. The challenge is not to have too glaring a contrast between the old and new. We’ve tried to have the new construction blend seamlessly into the old. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes not.

The first summer after we moved in, we ripped out the hideous “landscaping” which was swallowing up the side porch and was nothing more than a tangled, overgrown mess of ivy, both poisonous and English. It was the perfect opportunity to install a new garden.

How to make it look like it had always been there? We decided on a parterre garden. Parterres are traditionally designed to be viewed from above – you know, from the upper stories of the chateau – where their elaborate hardscapes can best be admired.

I decided on a much less elaborate design which appealed to my love of symmetry and wasn’t too full of itself.

Enough talking. Here is the installation of the new garden:

No proper Virginia garden is without brick:

The thing is, like pasta, you can’t rush a garden.

Sadly, I am not capable of dangling out of a second story porch window AND holding the camera straight.

 

You’ve got to give it a couple years before the “new” wears off, and it starts to look as though it has always been there:

As you can see, my style of gardening is “controlled chaos.”

A view of the parterre side of the house as Berkley and I returned from our walk. We haven’t seen the dear old boy in a while, have we?

And so the question remains, when are you coming to visit? We can sit on the porch and solve the problems of the world together sipping tea or mint juleps, whichever you prefer.

Thanks for reading,

Barbara