Living in the woods, and gardening there, has its unique benefits and its serious challenges. The advantages include a nice natural backdrop for your gardens, such as oak woods, blueberries, huckleberries, and Mountain Laurel. A disadvantage: Bambi comes to dine. Advantage: Land is inexpensive so you have room. Disadvantage: You have to clear the room and deal with the acid soil. (Lime is good.) However, the acid soil does have its great joys. The blueberries are healthy, and there are pink ladyslippers growing wild here. From the one large white pine tree, there are many tiny pine seedlings, thriving.

I arrived here determined to garden. In order to adjust to the hardpacked, claylike, acid silt, I make raised beds, bring in lots of compost, and use homemade compost, grass clippings and oak leaves, with lime, to build the soil. I've used wood chips, horse manure, shredded pine bark, whatever is cheap and easy, or just plain cheap.

By and large, there are plants growing, and they bloom. August here is grim, because the Japanese beetles have learned where I live; but most of the rest of the year, I have something in bloom.

These pages hold concepts under development. For the past several years I have been working on these concepts that reflect my philosophies about gardening. Since we all have a life to live, I'd like flowers that don't require a lot of fuss to get blooms out of them (hence easy care flowers;) and for making life a little sweeter: fragrance. I live in New England, and I love to be outdoors in the winter, so I end up walking down the garden paths; therefore, it's very important to me that the gardens be interesting year-round. Hence the interest in cold-climate winter gardening, structural elements and garden design. I tend to focus mainly on blooms but my interest in evergreens and textural items is starting to grow, and there is the posibility of an evergreen garden out front. If you are interested in winter gardening (as in zones 7, 6, 5 or less) drop me a line.

I've added a site map with a garden layout map per request of a friend. The layout map is clickable for four of the gardens, Oval, Angel, Herb, and South Foundation.

I have two main gardens, the Angel Garden, named for the little statue, and the Oval Garden, named for its shape. There are several other smaller gardens scattered about.

I am exploring night and moonlight flowers. White- or pale-pastel flowers that will glow in the moonlight are the main focus, and fragrance is an added (important) bonus. White scented petunias, pastel annual phlox, lots of white pansies and violets, white dianthus, and white snapdragons were good for night-glowing this year. I managed to get the moonflower seeds to sprout and grow this year, but Bambi ate the young plants. This year I'll try them next to the house. I wonder if letting them climb the oriental lily stalks would bother the lilies?

After a year of moonlight gardening, I've learned that the areas of my garden that are moonlit in winter are in moon-shade in summer. (The night-moon travels opposite the sun... since the sun is high in summer, the night-moon is low in summer; since the sun is low in winter, the night-moon is high. In daylight, while not of much interest to gardeners, the moon follows the path of the sun. Basic astronomy...) The "moonlight garden" is actually spread throughout all the gardens. I simply put in all the white, fragrant flowers I can, wherever I can. However, it turns out that the southwest curve of the Laurel Grove will be mostly moonlit all season long. So the Laurel Grove is growing in importance and in plantable area, and will be mostly annuals, in pastels, cream, and white this year.)

Originally, I started gardening because I love to be outdoors, and I wanted to create an outdoor sanctuary for prayer. There was something vaguely mideival and monastic involved. (This can be seen in the herb garden layout.) The gardening took on a life of its own, but I think I am coming full circle, and once again focusing on making these gardens a place of serenity that points to Jesus.