I've been a gardener my whole life.  When I was a child, my sister and I each had our own spot in the big vegetable garden that was ours alone.  I remember one year I created terraces with small field stones and planted it full of rock roses.  Another year was vegetable mounds.  I grew up in a small house located in the middle of a small meadow in the middle of a big woods.  I'd create moss gardens, transplanting ferns and winterberry plants. I'd weed the flower beds around our house.  I love digging in the dirt and playing with plants!

When I met my husband, I fell in love with the lot his small house was on, too.  An acre and a third, with a lawn in the middle, surrounded by a large old lilac hedge, surrounded by big trees.  He had started the process of landscaping it, tucking some lily turf here, some big old lavender bushes there.  As our family grew, the house did too.  We added on to both sides of the little box, creating terraced gardens on either side: one is our office entrance, the other is for entertaining.  There are long, sweeping shrub and perennial borders screening these lower levels, carving rooms out of the expansive lawn/soccer field.  As the trees have aged and failed, they've been removed, replaced by the next generation.  New shrubs have been purchased, trials for future design projects, planted to screen, accent, or just fill the space.  Along the way, perennials, groundcovers, unwanted shrubs and other 'leftovers' from the multitude of jobsites we service have been saved from the compost pile and tucked into fill the beds. 


Recently, Garden Design featured my garden in a nicely written article by Maureen Gilmer.  You can read it, and take your own garden tour, here: A Garden for Misfit Plants

You may have remembered stopping here on the Lincoln Township Library tour, many many years ago.... it has all changed!

If you're anything like me, I love looking through garden magazines this time of year.  Just think, in a few short weeks, we'll have lush green lawns to play on; spectacularly blooming patio pots to welcome us home; and borders filled with bountiful blooms to encourage the butterflys, birds and showcase our homes perfectly.  Okay, maybe I get a *little* carried away with my daydreams of summer landscapes & gardens....

Looking through those magazines, though, you may notice the ads for new & exciting plants!    P. Allen Smith puts his name on some of the best performers developed by Proven Winners, and Ball Ornaments markets reliable showstopping bloomers as well.  These plants aren't available just through retail shops, we can get our hands on them too! 

 
Here are a few photographs of this year's hottest flowering shrubs.  Let us show you how we can incorporate them into your landscaping.