My ex didn't want me to get this birdbath and it is one of the things that was the final straw in our marriage. Actually the other thing was three round bales of hay. That was nine years ago. When I had this birdbath on the other side of my creek before I moved the garden over here, I had Ranuculas around it which looked really pretty. When I get my new bare root roses through the mail, the roses get put in the bird bath prior to planting. All the large rainfall last Summer killed my perianals around the birdbath. I will have to get some more My girls put this statue in the birdbath some years ago, the lady is nursing a baby and I thought it was appropiate. Too bad about her neck or head and I haven't repaired it yet.

Our yard is divided into garden "rooms" and each has something of a focal point, not always intentional. The front entry "room" has a neat chair, the patio "room" has the pond, the gully "room" has a pergola, the back has the arches. When you have beautiful surrounding scenery, creating paths that lead to special vistas with sitting areas to enjoy the vista or view is a useful strategy. mary_lu nice garden! peachymomo you are working at it, it looks good. In time it will be as you envision it. Good things don't happen all at once. :)

Let me just say - my suggestions were not for Mr. Toad to plant ALL those plants and flowers I listed, but a list of some plants he could choose from of old English gardens (I've gleaned from reading Gertrude Jekyll's books and my family's gardens, as well). My Grannie grew them all and more. She also grew lots of succulents and cacti. She liked fussy gardens, no spaces between plants and often spilling over into the paths (dirt paths), and so do I. But I was not trying to impose my ideas on dear Toad, just suggesting plants I know are grown in English gardens. It all depends upon what YOU want, what delights your senses, what can grow in your climate, your soil & lighting, &etc. You don't have to have a lot of plants if you are trying to keep your work load to a minimum. As for paths - I like the grass paths best, too. I like soft, green paths better than brown, hard gravel. I like to walk barefoot in my gardens. It's cooler, prettier and only needs the occasional haircut. :) I do have some stepping stones and brickwork in various places, but I have three acres! There are Formal English gardens, formal Cottage Gardens, and the informal Cottage Gardens. There are even English Country Cottage Gardens. Some only have small plots, with the yard paved in front, so they use a lot of potted plants and just shrubs and trees. Some are clipped and sculptured and some are not. Some combine both. There are monochromatic schemes where perhaps only one kind and color of flower is used, and some choose a more colorful palette. No two gardens are alike. But one thing that is constant in any English garden is the use of greenery - lots of green plants, trees, grass. Where I now live in Oklahoma, having year round green in my garden is not possible. Grasses, lawn, trees, and plants go dormant in all and Winter, except for evergreen type plants and trees. But in Spring and summer, most of my garden is alive with greens of every hue. I love green. My garden is not the typical English garden, by any sense, but I like to use elements from English and French gardens, and not afraid to use other cultural ideas too. It's my garden. So, please know that I wasn't pooh-poohing your ideas, or anyone elses, Mr.. Toad, only offering suggestions for plants or elements you "might" want to try. Plants are very forgiving - they don't mind too much when we move them around. My garden is ever changing - it never looks exactly the same way from one year to the next. It's YOUR garden, and you have great beginnings already! ~Annie

While I will be the first to agree that a nice lawn of St. Augustine is a thing of beauty grass is still a high-maintenance ground cover, even if it is one that we have come to accept as the suburban standard. A lawn as we know it didn't become the "norm" until the Industrial Revolution when there was opportunity for the masses to copy the English aristocrats with their gardener-maintained swathes of grassy lawns showing they had the money and leisure to not have to plant every speck of ground in food crops. Until that time either a bare, packed-earth yard or a cottage garden was what homeowners had. See, I was paying attention in landscape classes. We have a lawn in the back for the dogs to play on but it isn't wall to wall grass, it's cottage-gardened as much as possible around the edges and the front is being planted with more and more native plants, grasses, and other drought-tolerant plants. We're lucky that we don't have an HOA nor is our code enforcement focused on this (yet). It's a difficult issue as so many people still do invest a lot of themselves in a "nice lawn" but the water problems are catching up with us and attitudes are hopefully changing.