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Lush and Rich
I love lush and rich-in a garden setting at least. I want my planted spaces burgeoning with green life, blooming endlessly, and growing with abundance. Sounds hot, right? Well I had the good fortune of visiting the garden of some dear friends Sunday night in St. Joseph, Missouri. Mitch Jameson and Bev Hoyt garden together on two city lots in a little spot of paradise in an old part of town.
As I've often said, gardening is first about people. It's about expressing our humanity and personality-sort of like art-in an outdoor space. A garden is then like a mirror to our minds. Mitch and Bev's garden is full of plants and ideas. It's lush and rich.
Gardening for Mitch and Bev is on a certain level about managing the chaos of a space left to its devices. They weed, divide, plant, and nurture. And plants thrive there, sometimes too well as in the case of a weedy Pinellia from friends in Kansas City. But despite such earnest management, they can't help but provide plants the opportunity to sow and grow, even if it means reining them in later. It's that expression of themselves that I find most enjoyable about their garden. Their garden has a personality of its own. It's lush by virtue of compost, mulch, and tough love.
And it's rich because of the myriad of plants that grow there. Irises alongside tree peonies. A fringetree (Chionanthus) underplanted with bugleweed (Ajuga) and golden bleeding hearts. Daylilies filling in here and there. Hostas, heucheras, hellebores. The list of occupants goes on. It's a garden of plant love-the best kind in my mind.
So take a look and enjoy. You'll probably see more of Mitch and Bev's garden in the years to come. It's a growing place for people and plants. Tell us about your plant love spaces. What do you thrives in abundance in your garden?
