{"id":279,"date":"2009-06-20T21:40:23","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T04:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/?p=279"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T21:43:11","slug":"serendipitous-gardening-or-how-we-came-to-accept-a-wild-gardening-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/serendipitous-gardening-or-how-we-came-to-accept-a-wild-gardening-style","title":{"rendered":"Serendipitous Gardening or How We Came to Accept a Wild Gardening Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

I devour garden books. I read them voraciously to learn how to plan a garden, what to plant where, how to design the space, all of that. I admire the well ordered designs, the borders made up of drifts of flowers that I see in those books. But somehow none of this takes.<\/p>\n

\"The
The foxglove self seeded and the Humming birds love it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our garden always ends up being a sort of a wild tumultuous space. I used to apologize my way around the garden when company came over, for it’s messiness, it’s over-grown-ness, it’s haphazardness. Part of me wanted something much neater and organized, like those pretty gardens in the books.<\/p>\n

But then, I don’t know when exactly, I started to appreciate the way plants just pop up where ever and to enjoy the delightful surprises. And most of all I came to accept our way of gardening. I’ve decided to call it Serendipitous Gardening.<\/p>\n

Why is our garden as it is? I suppose it’s because we hate to pull anything out. If it looks ok, we leave it. And I can’t throw anything out either so if I have to divide plants I’ll just pop them in another spot or we’ll create a new bed to house them. Or it could be because the compost with the seeds of spent flowers gets spread all around in the spring and those seeds just get a chance to grow and have a change of view? Or is it because I can’t say no to some plant or other that I don’t need or even have room for that I find at a garage sale? When I get home the poor thing gets bunged into any available space just before it expires in the pot. Who knows? A bit of all of it I suppose.<\/p>\n

\"The
The phlox among the iris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes being sort of laissez-faire about it all has it’s rewards. Plants that were seeded somewhere else re-seed themselves in unexpected places. Like the phlox that grew up in and around the iris bed. How did they know they would set off the irises so well?<\/p>\n

\"A
A bit of the serendipitous garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Or the bluebells and rose campion that pop up around the orange day lilies creating just the right mix of complementary color.<\/p>\n

\"The
The mallow can stay, for now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Or the mallow that I left in with the squash plants just to give the veggie garden a bit of color. As artists, I suppose, we have come to appreciate and delight in the serendipitous results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I devour garden books. I read them voraciously to learn how to plan a garden, what to plant where, how to design the space, all of that. I admire the well ordered designs, the borders made up of drifts of flowers that I see in those books. But somehow none of this takes. Our garden Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[166,161,168,163,1031,165,169,188,167,162,170],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden","tag-bluebells","tag-borders","tag-day-lilies","tag-garage-sale","tag-garden","tag-iris","tag-mallow","tag-phlox","tag-rose-campion","tag-serendipitous-gardening","tag-squash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4275,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/4275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summerhouseart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}