Musings of a Garden Lover: This is about gardens and gardening.

To introduce this blog, I am starting with my own garden in Lafayette, California. It is spring and this is the most colorful time for viewing it. I am a hopeless collector and the garden is bursting at the seams. I also use my garden as a testing area so I can determine the true habits and requirements of plants before specifying them.

Our front yard has a northwestern garden feel, even though we are inland of San Francisco Bay. The garden is mostly shaded by an old Deodar Cedar tree and is planted with many varieties of Japanese Maples, azaleas, ferns, bulbs, and perennials, which make it a potpourri of colors and scents. Except for the Cedar tree and the ubiquitous Plane tree--probably planted in the 1930s or 1940s as the neighborhood street tree--the plants have been installed over the past 10 years.

The first two pictures depict different views of the front yard. The house was built around 1936 and resembles a Cape Cod cottage--a rarity in this suburb which is largely composed of 1940s and 1950s tract houses. The architectural character of the house directed the design of the garden. The stone entry path derives from the house's stone chimney and the forms of the garden are soft and flowing.

Blooming now in the garden.....