"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , "Vox Humana"
wrote:

Thanks! Strangely, many of my immediate neighbors are pretty nasty and
ridicule me for my enthusiasm. There are others who stop by on their
walks
from other streets who say they plan their route so they can go past my
house. I guess you can't please everyone so I just try to do what I
think
looks good.

While I've near heard of gardeners being outright RIDICULED for going
overboard on a hobby, certainly a part of the population is envirophobic &
regards any fondness of the living world to be eccentric. I have gardened
the streetside so walking along the sidewalk in front of my place requires
pedestrians to pass between two gardens & for a few moments it will feel
like they're in the woods. Most people obviously halove that & will
saunter more slowly & occasionally bend to smell flowers, very
occasionally to steal one. But there are a couple people I've seen
repeatedly walk out into the street to avoid being "trapped" between the
plants. Nor do they ever look up from their feet. Even gardeners have
nature-phobic streaks such as in their deathly horror of chipmunks or
moles or ants or weeds, so imagine how horrified of nature someone can be
who doesn't even garden or understand the urge to garden.

From the photos looks like some pretty nice landscaping halfway between
cottage/woodland & formal.


Thanks. The landscaping just evolves. I try to make it more formal near
the house and gradually get less formal towards the woods. I'm pretty new to
this, so I have a lot of setbacks -- lots of trial and error. I'm starting
to learn the value of structure and the difficulty of trying to grow things
in dry shade.

I like to pick things up from the "hospital" table at nurseries -- the odd
shrub for $5 that is past blooming that no one wants. I start some things
from seed and cuttings, I always take donations from other gardeners even
when I don't have a place to put the plant. I shop clearance sales from
places like Spring Hill Nursery when they put everything that doesn't sell
out in their catalog on sale for 50 cents or a dollar.

I know what you mean about people being phobic about insects. The neighbors
are always dousing things with chemicals. I don't have the time or money
for that and I have found that there are fewer problems when you don't use
pesticides. I do use the occasional insecticidal soap or dormant oil
product.