Dreaming of Green

I love gardening.  Finally having our own backyard is a dream come true.  And it's not just the produce that tastes better or symphony of color from all the beautiful flowers.  I love being outdoors with my hands in the dirt - the smell of damp earth, the welcome warmth of sunshine in the spring,  the coaxing little green sprouts out of seeds so tiny it seems like magic.  Since the beginning of January I've been dreaming (literally) of gardens in our backyard. Now that it's the end of February, I'm so desperate for spring I can't barely stand it!

I want to create a vegetable garden behind the garage - something big and productive that takes advantage of all the sun we get back there. My grandfather (who I must have inherited the gardening gene from) educated me on the pros of raised garden beds and crop rotation (grouping certain types of plants together and then rotating them to a different spot each year).  So our plan for the spring is to create a set of 4 raised beds, 8' long and 3-4' wide and surround the whole thing with some deer netting for protection. Three of the beds will be for vegetables and I want to turn the fourth into a cutting garden filled with flowers.

And then there's the landscaping.  Our backyard is less than attractive these days.  Last summer we planted a few flowers in other parts of the backyard and side, but most of our landscaping efforts were put towards the front yard.  Now that our neighbor's fence is up and our deck is in place, we can plan out our future patio and desired backyard landscaping.  I've mentioned before that I'm really interested in perennials - plants and flowers that will come back year after year.  We inherited blackberry bushes, sweet peas, mint, astilbe and a bleeding heart from the former owner and in the past year I planted irises, gladiolas, anemones and knock out rose bush.  This year I'd like to add peonies and more dahlias (two of my favorite flowers).  Maybe a few other things. 

So now I'm planning.  I created an illustrator drawing of our backyard by tracing our survey, then added our deck, fence, trees, bushes and the perennial flowers we planted.  Next I added the garden - four raised beds for the vegetable garden then began plotting additional landscaping around the backyard.  We are also entertaining the idea of a pathway from the driveway to the garden along the garage, and then of course we want to build a patio.  The patio is a very rough sketch - we actually have no idea how big we want it, what shape, etc. - this spring we will get more serious about it.

The survey and drawings make our yard look deceptively large, but it's only because our house is so small!  Our yard is only .25 acres - pretty good for a starter house in suburban NJ, but very small compared to other places!