Big Garden Plans

I've been working on my planting plans for this winter lately, and I'm trying to be more organized about it so that when I get to this point next year I actually have some flowers.

It's the bulbs that always get me: I order tons and tons of them, then between ordering and arrival I just forget everything about where I wanted to put them, and they end up in a massive trench instead of artfully arranged around the garden. And I order ones that come in spring, instead of more summer bulbs.

And seeds, too! I order seeds and then when I get to seed starting I can't remember how many I wanted, and where they would go, so it's all very disorganized.

So instead of just daydreaming with garden catalogs, I've been making lists of places around the garden that need revamping (or vamping, I guess), plants I want to put in, trees I want to plant (yes, more!), and so on. I've been making lists of flowers in bloom at various points so I could add them to the garden. I've been studying books that discuss bloom times.

And I've been noting things on little plans like this:

(The things that kind of look like uterine lining are areas where I intend to plant things.)

The idea is to make lots of notes and have them in my sketchbook to refer to later, so that when things arrive I know where they are supposed to go in the garden. It's pretty schematic, but at least I will end up with flowers in all sorts of parts of the garden instead of just where I already have flowers.

I haven't tried this before, but it seemed worth a try.

posted by ayse on 08/22/08