I am Char Barnes, and I have been gardening at the same southwestern Connecticut house for more than twenty years. During that time it has gone from a neglected plot to a picturesque garden with paths and curved beds loaded with flowers. I have planted trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals.
Everything on this site is based on my personal experience and opinion, and I have plenty of both.
When we moved into our house over twenty-five years ago, we had to put up a mailbox. The previous owners had a mailbox on their door and we moved in just when door delivery was being phased out. So we put a mailbox on a cedar post near the street by the driveway. It needed a bed of flowers around it. There was a street tree about 15’ away, so I planted a bed around that. Having two little circles near the street seemed odd, so I dug the ground between them to make one large bed. It looked unbalanced to have a bed near the street and a few sad foundation shrubs near the house, so I created a bed that ran along the front porch. Somehow, both of these beds started creeping towards each other along the driveway. At that point the front garden consisted mostly of a 6’ deep U shaped border and then it somehow escaped along the side of the porch to the back garden, where it spilled into enormous curved beds that kept eating the sad lawn.
For the first couple years, my design philosophy was “more.” I was planting seeds under lights in my basement, haunting nurseries, and buying mailorder plants in 4” pots.