{"id":41288,"date":"2024-04-20T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T07:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=41288"},"modified":"2026-06-05T12:17:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:17:44","slug":"my-garden-looks-dreadful-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/my-garden-looks-dreadful-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Spring and My Garden Looks Dreadful. Here’s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"my<\/a>
My garden looks dreadful. Why? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s spring and my garden looks dreadful. Why?<\/p>\n

Everything is healthy and blooming.\u00a0 That’s not the problem. The problem is my garden looks<\/em> dreadful.\u00a0Conventional wisdom has it that, whatever nature does, the result can’t help but be lovely to the eye, mind and spirit.<\/p>\n

Not so with my front yard today. It’s a mess.\u00a0Where did nature go wrong? Strike that — where did I<\/em> go wrong?<\/p>\n

Sitting here, looking at the photos I just took of my hapless front yard, I’m thinking, I can’t blame nature for this disorganized mess. I made mistakes, two specifically, when I planted this garden last year.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I stuffed too many different<\/em> plants into this small space.<\/li>\n
  2. I let too many individual plants bloom in isolation, separated from kindred spirits.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    A Common Beginner’s Mistake<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    Way back in the twentieth century, when I was planting this front yard garden for the first time, a person with some gardening years packed on him took note of my choices as I stood at the nursery check-out counter.<\/p>\n

    \"iris-blade-blocks-view-of-azalea\"
    In my front yard the blade-like leaves of an iris block the view of a flowering azalea. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    “The trouble with beginning gardeners is they take home too many different plants,” he said. “It’s better to plant more examples of just a few species.”<\/p>\n

    But, beginner as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to choose “just a few” from the abundance on sale that day. I loaded up my cart with everything that caught my eye.<\/p>\n

    And now I have to wonder, is that where I went wrong when I chose the plants for my brand new garden? Did I grab up too many different plants?<\/p>\n

    My Garden Looks Dreadful. Here’s Why<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    I got out the list I’d given to my gardeners last April and took a look. Guilty as charged.<\/p>\n

    There were a couple dozen plants on that list: echinacea, lavender, armeria, geranium, agastache, scabiosa, lupine, guara, salvia, iris, and much, much more — too many plants, each with a will of its own, each heading in its own aesthetic direction, not acknowledging its neighbors.<\/p>\n

    My Plants Don’t Get Along<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    And now today, the dark, low-slung, moody heuchera ‘Black Pearl’ wants nothing to do with the cheery Iceland poppy ‘Champagne Bubbles Orange’ nodding at the sky just inches from it.<\/p>\n

    \"my<\/a>
    Clashing plants — moody heuchera and buoyant Iceland poppy. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Same goes for the bearded iris blades slicing upward next to the soft-leafed azalea bush over by the driveway.<\/p>\n

    Colors clash. Leaf shapes clash. Moods clash.<\/p>\n

    Everything in my garden is fighting for attention on its own terms. Nothing wants to cooperate. Nothing wants to give an inch. The iris wants to be an iris. The azalea wants to be an azalea. The poppy won’t let go of its poppy-ness.<\/p>\n

    A Bad Idea — Plants Sprinkled About, not Clustered<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    Making matters worse, I planted too many individual plants all by themselves. Plants are sprinkled randomly about, not clustered together with like plants.<\/p>\n

    There are two Iceland poppies blooming my garden today, for example. One is at the top of the yard, the other near the bottom, each one insisting on being as orange as possible. Isolated as they are from anything equally bold, the two poppies come off, not as exuberant, but shrill.<\/p>\n

    \"my<\/a>
    Cranesbill blossoms, their modest heads trembling in the shifting air. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I left it to the monthly gardeners to plant those poppies, and they sprinkled them here and there about the garden. A bad idea. If the poppies had been planted together in a cluster — in a spot designated just for them — they might have expressed their shiny optimism with confidence. As it is, they are shamed from across the way by the modest cranesbill blossoms, their delicate heads bowed and trembling in the shifting air.<\/p>\n

    Same goes for the heuchera. If the moody ‘Black Pearl’ had been planted alongside the rusty ‘Georgia Peach’ heuchera, the deep colors of the two could have played off each other nicely.<\/p>\n

    But What’s to Be Done About It?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    What a mess. What do I do now? I’ve been known to rip out perfectly innocent plants — living things doing exactly what they were intended to — just because their muddy maroon petals or their dry, leggy stems offended my eyes.<\/p>\n

    I’ll try to stay calm. I’ll wait. I’ll see what summer brings. Maybe the heuchera and the poppy will make friends by then.<\/p>\n

    If not, I might have to choose between them.<\/p>\n

    More about the planting of this garden at “An Unruly Garden Tamed at Last.”<\/a>\u00a0 More about my weakness for irises at “Purple Bearded Irises — Close Up and (Very) Personal.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    \"my<\/a>
    This iris is a keeper, and so is the azalea blooming behind it — and clashing with it. Somehow I’ll find a way to keep them both. How about a single spot somewhere for all the irises and their distinctive foliage — an iris patch? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \"heuchera-and-iceland-poppy-clashing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    My garden looks dreadful. Here’s why. My plants won’t cooperate. The iris wants to be an iris. The azalea, an azalea. The poppy, a poppy.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,13],"tags":[34,472,2846,2847,88,82],"class_list":["post-41288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-house-and-garden","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-dont-miss","tag-garden","tag-heuchera","tag-iceland-poppies","tag-nature","tag-on-the-funny-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48793,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41288\/revisions\/48793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}