Garden's Tenth Anniversary
October 2004 was the Tenth Anniversary of the Moosey Garden - we moved into our house in the country on October 1st, 1994. The garden we inherited was small and functional. Tough country-style shrubs like Photinia, Forsythia, and Viburnum Tinus were planted in the grass, and Iceberg and Dublin Bay roses covered one fence. Low-growing conifers lounged in the bark chips surrounding the housem which was surrounded by scruffy, lumpy lawns and a post and rail sheep fence.
No irrigation!
I remember my very first days in the garden - weeding, then carrying buckets of water from the pond (no irrigation), then watching the sheep put their heads through the fence and eat the new rose shoots. Aargh!
Archive Photographs of the Moosey Garden's Early Days
The real start of the Moosey Country Garden was quite simple - one day I began digging. I decided I wouldn't ever weed-kill the grass, that I'd always use my spade and hand-digger. I chose to create the driveway garden - my very first development.
Ten Years of Gardening Phases!
During its first gardening decade the Moosey Garden bravely survived the various phases of its head-gardener. First there was the rose and perennial phase - growing cuttings of catmint, phlomis, penstemons, and so on - experimenting with climbers (so much room!), devouring rose books. Then the flaxes and cordylines arrived, desperately needed to complement the fluffiness of the rose flowers. I soon saw the gardening light, and became a zealous foliage-plant convert. Various foliage plants big and small were purchased - Gunnera for the pond, Bergenias and Lambs' Ears for every border edge. One year the Moosey Grand Gardening Plan incorporated lots of expensive bearded Irises. Then followed the year of the variegated leaf, the year of the orange and purple flowering annual, and so on...
Gardening Phases - Flowers, Foliage, Flaxes, Roses
Ten years later, and I was still digging! Ten years of hands-on gardening solo - ten years of listening to my cricket radio, writing lists, mulching my hand digger, rescuing plants from sales, running my country retirement home for unwanted roses, rhododendrons, and camellias...
A Tenth Anniversary Garden Party?
So did I throw a Tenth Anniversary party for a garden? Do a general fertiliser dump? Completely dose of all garden beds with truckloads of soil conditioner? Did I buy a new super-duper barbecue on wheels for the house patio? I think just bought an anniversary rose...