My Gardening Philosophy

It’s taken me time to come to grips with our land and gardens here at the farm (and plenty of trial and error). Monty Don once offered the advice to “rip it out if you don’t love it!” and I hate to say I’ve taken that advice literally too many times to count. But because a large portion of our gardens are designed for beauty, I simply must. A strong example would be the white peonies that just happened to bloom next to the bright orange and black poppies early in the spring. Soft, delicate, white plumes next to the vibrant and (frankly) harshly colored poppy? It simply couldn’t be. So out the poppies came.

In fact, I’ve had to redo entire beds as my taste and style change. Buy my gardening philosophy is quite simple: whatever the garden is for, it’s got to be beautiful.