I've been very busy redesigning my garden. The landscaping the previous owners had professionally installed was heavy on xeriscaping; it had a very natural, low-maintenance look with out-of-control winter jasmine shrubs, liriope, hawthorne, and fountain grasses.
But my favorite gardens are manicured, with fragrant plants that include roses, orchids, peonies, lily-of-the-valley, lilies, gardenias, irises, plumeria / frangipani, and pikake / jasmine sambac.
I'd guess that considerable sums were spent on landscaping 1/4 of an acre and installing a wall fountain. I'd rather that the money have been spent on a small swimming pool. It's tough to retro-fit for a pool now since one side yard is blocked by a brick wall and the other side yard houses the central air conditioning system which makes the path too narrow for a bulldozer.
Since moving in, I've pretty much pulled up or given away many of the original plantings and replaced them with plants better suited to my color schemes and sculptural forms. The knock-out rose shrubs can triple in size within a year; the leaves remain green and the flowers continuously bloom all year long.
This week, between the Olympics and the Democratic convention, I've put in about 50 hours of work in the yard—between 7am-noon/break for lunch, nap, and errands/back between 5pm-8pm. I've been burning up to 400 calories per hour and my body is sore and tired when I go to sleep. I also had a nasty run-in with some fire ant hills around my ankles...the bites have finally started to scab over.
But now it's all worth it: with everything perfectly in place, the beautiful views remind me of the wonderful al fresco dining experiences I enjoyed in Italy and France.
Here are some of my favorite sources for plants in my garden:
http://www.treepeony.com/
http://www.johnscheepers.com/
http://www.vanengelen.com/
http://www.stokestropicals.com/
http://www.schreinersgardens.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=SIGO
http://www.reneesgarden.com/
www.whiteflowerfarm.com
http://heirloomtomatoplants.com/
Back in the summer of 2005, when I was looking for a house to buy, one of the properties I viewed had a swimming pool and cabana that pretty much filled up the entire back yard. There was also a small lake/canal just outside the pool gate. If the house hadn't been so old, dated, and over-priced, it would have been on my short list.
Instead, our best option was a well-designed home that gives us about 1,500 s.f. less than our home in New Hampshire but makes better use of the space. The builder used to construct homes in Palm Springs, so the house has a vibe that that's very casual / open plan / low-maintenance.
Sometimes, I think about the new construction home with a pool we could have built on a hill overlooking Lake Lawtonka, but waiting 18 months to move in and sharing the mountaintop with the vermin that inhabit the area bring me back to reality. I'm very happy that we opted to scale down.
