I love holiday lights!
My inner child delights at the dazzling displays!
I’ve noticed there are some distinctive styles to outdoor holiday lighting. They range from very carefully crafted scenes to minimalist. There are the professionally installed displays of splendor and then there are the ones that look like the homeowner tripped while carrying the box of décor and wherever they landed – that’s where they stay. Looks good! Plug ‘em in!
I think these lighting personalities mirror our landscape design personalities.
There’s the carefully crafted design where the homeowner’s very involved in the process of choosing and placing plants and there’s the minimalist – these are usually the people who sort of wish they’d bought a condo instead of a house and yard to maintain.
There’s the professionally designed and installed landscape with 3-5 of everything to give the bed the perfect balanced look.
And then there’s the trip and fall style. This is more my style. Not because it’s my landscaping design philosophy. I try to stick to the lovely sketches that I poured over for hours during our brief winters. My re-creation of Pinterest plans that I fell in love with, undoubtedly crafted in some Pacific Northwest Eden that doesn’t remotely resemble my climate or conditions, only exists on paper.
More often than not, while browsing the nurseries with plan in hand, I’m seduced by botanical sirens. My delighted inner child takes over my buying decisions and before I know it, my budget has been eaten up with impulse buys, my carefully crafted plan abandoned.
Leave your inner child at home when shopping for plants.
I come home with flats full of one-off plants, not the meticulously planned three of each variety, and I begin to find spots where they can possibly grow. This is a very backwards way of landscaping! And the process is made harder in my yard because although I have 1.5 acres, I only have about 20 square feet of full sun.
The bed in front of my house was professionally designed and installed. For the first year, I tried not to adulterate the plan, but that’s a lost cause now as my “I’ve gotta have this” plants have made their way into the bed (sorry Matt).
I have another project that I need Matt-the-professional to come design and install for me, but I am too embarrassed by what my inner-child has done to that front bed to invite him back out.
As each season goes by, I realize that I need to be smarter about my garden design (maybe stop creating new beds?) and gravitate more towards the carefully planned beds. Discipline and constraint are needed because with chronic pain, maintenance is always an issue. I can’t keep bringing home flats of mismatched plants that need room to grow. And they invariably wind up going in the wrong place and later need to be moved, doubling the work.
I should be realistic and close the gap between how much work I can manage and the number of plants and beds that I build. In short, I must rein in my desire for one of every plant in the world.
I begin each year with the intention of restraint, but the memory of the labor required quickly fades as I sit by the fire in my comfy chair, inspired by beautiful catalogs, garden books, and Pinterest. Maybe one more bed could go over here? My life certainly won’t be complete without a Japanese garden. And the cycle begins again.
What is your personal landscaping style? Have you found ways to stick to your plan?
Maybe this is the year for some help from Matt-the-professional. But when he gets here, I will have to apologize for tarnishing his design. It’s not really my fault, I tripped!
Happy Gardening! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
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