Ingrid, I delayed posting to your thoughtful question because I don't have a clue. Somehow I thought you deserved a better answer than that. But it does seem logical to define mine based on climate as you did, so I would say my wish would be fulfilled if mine turns out to be a Lush Florida Rose Garden - kinda bold, forever (well, almost) green and loaded with color-rich blooms. I'm not formal but I like order. I'm not a plopper. I think about it and measure in my head what should go where. I like the way you define informal, "informal mixture of plants that are mostly not clipped or pruned into submission but left to grow in a natural way, with a pleasing mixture of colors and shapes and a certain lushness to the overall look." That's the way I like mine, too. But since I've pretty much packed the plants in, we'll see how much of a thicket my dream turns into.

Sherry

Ingrid, I remember you wrote that your goal was to blend the garden with the surrounding scenery. I live in suburbia among concrete and metal. My goal is not to blend but to stand out as much as possible. I like color, any color, the more the better. I aim to block out the grey pavement, and create privacy with shrub borders which are mostly roses interspersed with evergreens for winter screening. I also want my garden to be informal - it is more relaxing to me this way. I don't want my garden to show my efforts as a gardener so nothing much gets pruned into a formal shape. By the end of summer everything is a tangle, but a colorful one, which is fine by me.

Masha

This question pops up on the forum periodically, and I greet it with pleasure every time. Much of the character of my garden is determined by soil, climate, sun and shade, availability of water, which all have a great say in what I can grow. Then there are characteristics that govern the garden aesthetically: the garden is in a rural area, in the middle of fields and woods, and it's all on a slope and irregularly contoured. So: old roses and lavender and Italian cypresses and pines, olives, lilacs and ligustrum; hedges, yes, and even clipped, but not rigidly so, with the garden wilder and less formal toward the boundaries with the surrounding land, and more cultivated in the interior parts. Overall it has a rustic character, with plants pruned only as needed, herbaceous plants allowed to seed, and some native wild plants included in the garden. As far as personal inclinations are concerned, while I have collector's tendencies where roses are concerned, the garden is a garden first and a rose garden only after that. I like well-defined masses and voids; I like hedges; I like plants grown to their full size; I like functional paths, though I sin often here, and lots of places to sit, in sun in fall and winter, in shade when the weather is hot. I like the garden to be comfortable to walk in, which on our steep property means a lot of terracing. I want it to be a place where there's always something to see, and always something it's worth looking at closely. I love the formal elements of steps, pergolas, benches, etc., but our budget is such that these have to be very simple and very inexpensive. In this household, the gardening money goes for plants.

The garden is a place to work with nature, not against her. Part of my vision is a healthy garden, where my activities improve the soil and where plants are healthy and thriving because they're suited to the conditions. I will add that late summer is not the time of year when I congratulate myself on the success of my efforts.

When I woke up this morning it was gray, cool, and drizzling. Fall is on the way, and I hope I'll cheer up along with the plants, because it has been drearily hot and bright: even the Bermuda grass has burned dry, and I haven't been able to stand to go down in the big garden with its remorseless sun. So I don't feel good about the garden I've just been describing with such passion. We go through this every year, though, and the garden always survives, and it always greens up once it starts to rain again.

Melissa

Ingrid, I thought about your question.
Short answer: EASY.

Long answer:
My garden is... how I like my garden to be.
It is large for local standards, but still small enough that I can manage it alone (1 acre), it is all based on low-to-zero maintenance, with easy plants, that are scattered here and there, apparently at random.
It is thought in way to offer something in every season, to have many evergreen plants, and to have a lot of color for months.

It is an old, simple, low-profile countryside garden. Nothing astonishing like ancient statues or fountains, it is just an open space one can easily enjoy.

http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu359/scardan123/bellaluce.jpg
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Gosh, where can I start and how can I not sound pretentious and preposterous? My garden is my vision. It is my life's work. I see it sometimes as a novel, the kind of novel I love like something very complicated from Victorian English literature. There are many chapters full of plots and subplots with a metaphor around every corner. I want to lead you on with beauty and mystery. I want to inspire to evoke feelings and memories. I am trying to fit my garden into the surrounding landscape, which is dramatic and wild. The garden is also dramatic and wild but with some focus and order because it is a garden. I think there are few plants more emotionally charged for people than roses. I think all rose gardeners relate to that on different levels.

Here are Scardan's pictures. A very beautiful garden.

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mendocino_rose, have no fear of sounding pretentious and preposterous. With the natural surroundings that you have how could your garden be anything but grand and dramatic? (I'm not sure, never having been there, but I get the feeling that Ingrid's garden could easily go grand.) The scale of your vision fits perfectly with the scale of your location. There's no way your garden could ever be over-the-top, but unless our names are Hearst or Biltmore the problem is in the doing. On the other hand a postage stamp-sized garden may have that risk (and others), but, hopefully, the beauty of the roses mitigates any errors in that regard. Goodness knows, we all have the same mission...to bloom where we're planted.

Sherry

Pam--your post sounds like poetry----You write so lovingly about your paradise it should be a book.

I have many different visions about my garden and the heart and mind are willing but sadly my body doesn't seem to cooperate.

I don't complain because many folks are in much worse condition than I am.

I can still enjoy my painting---my many lovely fabrics for quilting and my many books

Florence

Florence,
I have always enjoyed looking at pictures of your garden. My Zephirine is an ugly duckling compared to yours, and your Paul's Himalayan Musk is spectacular! You have so much to enjoy in your garden.

Ingrid,
I went out this morning and took some pictures of my tangled borders and even though I didn't do it on purpose, you can see concrete is a prominent feature.

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My vision has always been that my garden is a haven away from an overcrowded world that sometimes disappoints me. Perhaps I'm attempting to build the kind of world I wish I lived in -- beautiful, mysterious, a bit secluded, yet relaxed and friendly, welcoming to visitors (I love to entertain).

I tend to take on a bit too much and alas, my garden is often unkempt. I keep asking more of it and myself as well. Over the past couple of years we've added fruit trees, vegetable beds, and in an attempt to control water usage are beginning to plant some natives. Despite this confusion of approach, the vision continues. I am encouraged by having visited gardens that remind me that it is actually possible to create haven-gardens (some belonging to members of this forum), though possibly not with my own scattershot approach.

Rosefolly

I am single, and live alone (with dogs) and my vision is "Garden Romantica" When I bought the place, it was a well ordered functional garden with hedges and well defined edges. -All very neat and tidy, but no passion. My vision is to turn my garden into a place of romance. To step into it, is to step out of the reality of today's world, -& step back in time.

I have been working on an English style tropical garden, staying in the tropical realm because I cannot imagine a garden without my elephant ear collection. However, I love castle gardens, stone walls, statues, etc.

Here is a site I ran across....I would love to do this...
http://www.secretgardenlandscaping.com/ruins.html

Ingrid, I love the question and I agree with what Poodlepup wrote. I feel the same way. I want to step back in time. I love movies that take place in another era and it influences my garden and home.

I want to see a combination of order and wildness. I want antiqued colors awash in the garden. I want something grand and something informal on the property as well. Like Marie Antoinette had at Versailles with The Hameau de la Reine. In fact, I want to feel like Marie Antoinette in my garden.

I like old-fashioned style roses best. I like the roses to complement each other and be as fragrant as possible. I want a garden that has an air of mystery and a grand allée of pale pink cabbage roses to walk through each morning. I want a grand fountain in the center of the whole garden that is decorated with cherubs.

Now, my current garden is too humble to allow for all this, but I try to make it pretty as possible. :)

Juliet

My vision is a scaled-down version of the formal gardens of the Frence, English and Dutch. Every year, my vision gets a little more scaled down as I realize that my dreams are much bigger than my time and efforts allow.

I want order, clipped box hedges, beautiful garden bones in the winter, and lots of color and blooms springing forth from these bones in the spring/summer.

This is a picture of one part of my developing garden. If you look closely, you will see the small boxwood that will eventually contain the blooms.

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Once again, I love the photos of people's gardens, and their thoughts about them. Thanks so much for this thread.

Ingrid, I was stumped. Do I HAVE a garden vision at all? Hmmm. Then, while I was outside watering this morning, it hit me. PROFUSION. That's what I strive for - my garden is not necessarily a tangle, although sometimes it is, but my ideal is profuse growth, profuse bloom, profuse abundance from my veggie garden. I also want my garden to be an oasis away from the city neighborhood that crowds it, so have plenty of climbing and enclosing plants. I want it to be inviting, hence the arch-covered walkway, with arches echoing at the side gate and and at the entrance to the little side yard. I want variety and a sense of discovery, even on a city lot, and have created distinct spaces, such as an Asian garden in the corner, veggies in another area, and a secret shade garden in front. But everywhere, I want PROFUSION.

Having seen Pam's Mendocino garden, she has achieved what she describes, and then some. Her garden is a jewel, set in a gorgeous setting. Mine is a little puzzle box, set in 1940-era Sacramento suburbia.
Anita

I very much like Profusion, as well as its food garden cousin, Abundance.

Rosefolly

I'm fairly new to gardening, but I would say my style seems to be traditional but functional. We live on a small farm so wildlife is an issue. I love old fashioned roses, but can only have a few hidden in the cottage garden (so far my deer haven't found them). I plan to put in more, but have planted them with perennials and lots of lavender. I also plan to put some rugosas in the herb garden and maybe a hedge of gallicas (if the deer doesn't eat them).

I have a cottage garden that's supposed to be a "fairy garden" for my nieces, but is a place for all my shade flowers and is backed with grapes and blueberries (sunny side). I'm planning a potager that's part herb garden and part salad garden, backed by purple and red raspberries. It's also a place my nieces and nephews can grow a few mini vegetables.

I've also started an old fashioned vegetable garden that mixes in flowers and herb in big blocks with paths. Nothing as formal as a potager but very easy to use. We have a large apple tree, but I would love to add a few more fruit trees.

All of your gardens are so beautiful. I have started small, but hope to get most of the hardscape of the potager done next year. We have a very short growing season, but I'm trying to find plants that do well with our short, but hot summers and long, cold and snowy winters. I'm also trying to work in enough vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers to provide us with summer and hopefully some winter produce.

I will never be able to achieve the beautiful rose gardens you all have, but I so enjoy the many pictures. Some of them are like taking a tour of Italy! You all have so much talent and vision. What a great forum :)

I just have to say that I love hearing of everyone's visions and seeing the photos. You are all far too modest. I've been to Rosefolly's garden and seen photos of others. And Florence dear, didn't you know that one of the basics of the romantic garden is a little benevolent neglect? The criticisms are unfounded in my opinion. Everyone who has responded to this post obviously has put their hearts into their gardens. That is the number one requirement for success. Also thank you to those who made kind comments about my vision.

Pamela, as always you are kindness personified. Thank you.

Back again. Anita's word--Profusion--resonated with me too. I want to fill this place with a great mass and variety of plants: this is a deep urge. We feel this particularly this time of year, when it's been hot and sunny for months and we are longing for shade, coolness and green. The problem of course is that the ground is barren because it's hot and stony and poor; so a part of my gardening task is to find plants that will grow even in these conditions. With limited water it's hard. My motto is: there's a plant for every set of conditions.

Hear, hear, to what Pam said. I love reading about and seeing the infinite ways a passion for gardening expresses itself.

Melissa

Our water bills are seriously affecting my rose-laden vision. Our neighborhood is supplied by a for-profit water company, and they are making plenty of profit. The CEO must be living in a palace, eating peeled grapes one by one out of the butler's fingers. Our water cost is 10x-20x of the surrounding areas.

So I'm very seriously thinking about pulling out just about everything but the agaves, aloes, and yucca, planting several Quercus agrifolia that are native to this area, with maybe a few Ceanothus, Toyon, and native Rhus, removing all the irrigation, and calling that my garden. I've let the grass die, take 2 minute timed showers and cut our water usage by 40%, yet our bill has doubled.

Letting go of the roses will be painful, but maybe it's time.

I feel so many emotions reading your posts, with hoovb's being the saddest and most poignant. Gail's garden is a vision of loveliness and it's heartbreaking that corporate greed is eroding her dream garden. To say her situation is unfair is a vast understatement. Gail, I'm so very sorry for your plight.

Everyone's posts are wonderful and I'm touched by the honesty and heartfelt emotion of your statements. Thank you for sharing this part of yourselves, and I hope that there will be more posts to read and savor.

Ingrid

I have a photo (taken a couple of years ago)of my "fairy tale" garden phase. I put it in photobucket, but don't know how to post it on this forum. Can anyone help me?

My garden vision is to have a fragrance collection of roses, as well as a floral collection of roses. I like the look of different kinds of antique roses in a mix in the garden, with a variety of fragrances and shrub shapes to add interest.

Some of my garden areas have a slightly more formal appearance, and some of the areas have more of a semi-wild look.

A Pam Wanna Be here, but with more weeds. Some weeds are very nice; Violets, Bee Balm, Blanchefleur, Hardy Geraniums, and of course Creeping Charlie etc.

Lilies go well with roses and grapes. JBs love grape leaves, but someone has to feed them!

F.L.

A pictorial representation of my life.

Hoov there are many roses that don't need to be watered in the summer after getting established. I've often thought that if things got bad here that I would plant many more once bloomers, species, and ramblers. My big ramblers are not watered in the summer at all. One of my very favorite roses, Wolley Dod's Rose is not watered. Of course it doesn't mean summer color but maybe that isn't so bad. All those other things you mentioned are pretty too. I love my bottle brushes. agaves, Chaste tree, oleanders etc. A gardener's passion always finds a way. I am sorry about the for profit water company. It really makes me mad. In the town south of us, Ukiah, everyone is rationing their water. The company decided to raise their rates because thye're not making enough money. Grr!

Hear, hear, to what Pam just said. Admittedly we have milder summers and more annual water than a lot of Californians, so what works for us may not for others. I don't water my established plants. Every year we have at least several weeks without any rain; last year it was four and a half months with one centimeter of rain. Almost everything lived. We have deep clay in much of the garden and mulch everything heavily; in the stony places we've planted olives and I'm looking for other suitable plants. The roses are Teas and Chinas, once-blooming old roses, ramblers, species and their hybrids; in cooler areas Hybrid Musks. Lavender, sage, rosemary, bearded irises, lilacs, ligustrum, pittosporum, chaste tree, agapanthus, box, spring-flowering bulbs, four o'clocks and many others do well in the garden. We're working on hedges and windbreaks, though of course they'll probably be grown big enough to be useful around the time I leave my earthly existence. And of course our roses bloom much less than those of gardeners who irrigate: this is the price we pay. All the same, there's usually something worth seeing in the garden. If it's so hot and dry nothing is in flower, it's too hot and dry for me to go out there anyway. In that case I stay under the wisteria pergola and admire my Sansevierias.
My thought is this: if the natural landscape can support a healthy flora without irrigation, the garden can too. If you're in the middle of a desert it may be another story.

Poodlepup,

I'd love to see the picture you saved,

If you hover over your picture with your cursor a box pops up underneath with codes. Copy and paste the HTML code here and when you preview your message you'll see the picture.

Tina

Thanks, Tina, I tried that many times but the "paste" option does not get highlighted, and therefore does not work. I tried paste in the body of the message, the url link, and the name of link boxes. Nothing works. Bummer

Try Control-C for Copy and Control-V for Paste. Or Vaste, I guess.

Rosefolly

It's ok. Gardens evolve and change. That's part of gardening. I want to do gravel in sections instead of (dead) grass as in holleygarden's lovely picture. That will help. I won't get rid of the roses instantly; it will come over time as the oak trees grow. Unless the drought continues.

I guess my vision is "happiness." Happy plants like to grow and bloom. They want to grow and bloom. It makes me happy to see them happy. So I don't worry if a plant is not happy and perishes. I might try it in a different spot. Luckily this is a great area for growing roses. Perhaps a tad humid, but that is also a good thing during summer drought. The roses go semi-dormant but don't dry out. The ground also doesn't get bone-dry (under a few inches of mulch). Other happy plants I use are natives.

The structure of the garden is "evolutionary." I add little by little. It takes me a few years to fill in the plantings. I like to watch how it grows, how we use it, and leave room to adapt. The biggest thing I did was a stone wall and path going around half the house, which defined a garden. Even that evolved over a couple of years. Stone edging -> stone retaining wall where the grass didn't grow well on a slope -> having the wall enclose the garden -> incl. gravel path -> making an approach to the house through an archway into a garden -> wrapping the stone wall and path around the house so I could fix a drainage problem .... I like Christopher Alexander's "Timeless Way of Building"

Mike

My vision has always been quite simple: a naturalized garden full of plants which please DW and I.

The sad part is that, with my work schedule, naturalized becomes wild and unkempt in the blink of an eye. I've begun the tough task of replacing many high-maintenance plants with easier choices like hosta and viburnum. And, of course, nothing is higher maintenance than my roses.

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Harry, what a beautiful, gorgeous cottage garden. It looks romantic, lush and beautifully planted. I can see you have a great eye for color, structure and compatibility of planting. However, I would have thought those acres of lawn take more (and more boring) maintenance than your beautiful roses!

Ingrid

I think this might actually work.
This is how my garden looked in it's "fairy tale" stage. It was sloped from the back of the lot DOWN to my back door, which meant a muddy mess in the Winter when it rained, AND in the Summer, when I watered. Not practical, but sure was dreamy. This was the view from my sun room, at the bottom of the slope.

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cottage...with unbelievable fragrance and enveloping beauty

Without a doubt, my garden vision would best be described as an extension of my personality. It's not all that uncommon for me to be referred to as weird nor for my reply to be a simple thank you. My garden isn't often painted in such a harsh shade but more so in a never seen anything quite like it tone which I generally acknowledge to be a compliment ;-)

My motto has almost always been that necessity is a mutha and my garden began under that premise. The landscape was a disaster both cosmetically and structurally. My conscience would not allow me to put my wife through the embarassment any longer and some erosion/water torrent issues required urgent structural changes to a hillside. In an attempt to begin to solve the hillside issues, I started with an 80,000 lb pile of rocks that would soon become the foundation for my 3/4 of a decade 3,000,000 pounds of hardscape garden vision. As that first pile of rocks began to be placed and transformed into a koi pond and rock garden, my vision started to take shape. Knowing absolutely nothing of landscape design or what style was what, I simply decided to take advantage of my odd lot shape and changes in elevation and try to change scenery and style around every corner. Virtually every section has a water feature, a different pathway surface, different specimen type plants and my own fence and gate designs. Some sections are a bit more formal, some more natural but all are filled with a lot of color, both in foliage and flower.

Along the way as I was getting closer and closer to it all coming together, I started to recognize the amazing contribution that roses were making to my overall scheme, especially when it came to my constant quest for late summer color. That's what brought me to these great rose forums. While I consider that a great thing, I suppose some who grow weary of my gallery postings might beg to differ. Nevertheless, I am now somewhere between 60 and 70 roses and counting and can finally begin the task of perfecting my care techniques for them.

boxofrox, after your fascinating description I'm dying to see garden pictures, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I want to see how in the world you were able to incorporate that much stone (three million pounds, and how did you measure that?) into your garden. Please, if you have pictures, do post them for us. And no, we are not weary of your gallery postings.

Again, your post was so interesting and unique, thanks so much for responding.

Ingrid

Some hardscape shots from both early on and more recent......

This is where it started, the pond and rock garden where I set out to remediate 2 things, my wife's yard embarassment and the hillside starting to cave in from runoff. The first pic is from a few years ago, the second of the pathway is recent. The flagstone is Montana Bronze with Platt's Black brass buttons groundcover.

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One of the largest contributors to the tonnage was the wall. It is 5'&6' high and stretches over 100' if I recall right. It starts at the sunroom and runs under the subdeck in the picture then 45's and runs about 60' then takes a left 90 for about 10' then a right 90 for about 30'. It is made out of 2'x4' blocks that weigh like a ton apiece and all I remember is that there were so many of them that it took two full semi-lowboy trailers full off loaded on an island in the cul-de-sac in front of my house. They went together like leggos. This is the wall in different stages of disarray and array :-)

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The wall 90's between the birdfeeders and the contorted cedar and continues down past the garden shed where it terminates.

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Another huge tonnage contributor is the walkway you partially see in the last pic. It runs from stairs up to the pond along the sunroom along the back of the house, left out to the garden shed and right all the way out to the front of the memory garden.....

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And with all that hardscape talk, I've got to take a nap because just thinking about having done it makes me tired and I'm sure you've probably grown weary with it all as well ;-)

rox:
Your garden is certainly the result of an imagination that has broken free of its moorings: congratulations! I'm struggling to lift anchor myself. Great job!
Melissa

boxofrox-That is fantastic. You've done one hell of a job. I think the most beautiful designs are born from solving the biggest problems. You should be proud of yourself.

Boxofrox, Disney's got nothing on you! You sure do have gorgeous plants in PNW. Wow, very excellent!! Your garden and pots are wonderful. I'd say your vision is 20-20.

Sherry

Boxofrox, I'm (almost) speechless. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw these pictures. That is a garden paradise. (I'm assuming the hunky man in the second photo is you.) Congratulations on an endeavor that I imagine could have killed lesser men. Your wife must be incredibly pleased.

Ingrid

How kind of you alls :-)

Careful Ingrid, Flattery will get you almost anywhere ;-) Fortunately there was a nice breeze that day and the smoke emanating from that puzzled looking cranium had drifted off. All the angles and elevations of that particular project were mentally excruciating plus the fact that it was to be totally waterproof to provide for the outdoor room and storage below. I really love both the up and down hardscape spaces but the softscapes above and below the wall that came with the next section were much more rewarding. We often put so much thought into the seating areas when it's always the view from them that's the most important. Through a combination of accident and design, I ended up with over 30 seats with a view of one part of the garden or another. Our first choice is always the swing facing the Wall of Easy but a close second is under the wisteria next to the pond :-)

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Beautiful pictures of everyone's garden but since I have a "thing" about hardscapes, boxofrox' picture of his pathway from above was one of my favorites. Put me in the middle of a stone yard and I'm in heaven!

I cringed when I read hoovb's comments about the water situation there. What a terrible dilemna! We are on well water here so I don't have any worries about cost and really take my ability to water as much as I want for granted. I complain daily about the heat and humidity and flat landscape here but at least we do get rain. I hope it all works out for you somehow and you don't have to get rid of your roses.

Lynn