Getting Started on Garden Planning

As much as I enjoy making the inside of our home more personal and pretty, I’m also a little obsessed with taking that to the outside of our house too.  At this time of the year I’m usually coming home from the library with stacks of gardening magazines and books, poring through seed catalogs, and planning the next season’s garden.  This year is no exception—I was just at the library this morning : )

I am certainly an amateur at this…none of our gardens are professional looking by any means…but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy pottering about with a shovel and hoe and moving plants from one place to another.  Even when I lived in an apartment I still tried to plant some pots with flowers and even once attempted a disastrous fail of a vegetable container garden.  (Short story—everything slowly died!) 

Since we’re now on a property with a lot more space (and room to garden!) I no longer need to even think about relegating plants to containers (though I still do for the front steps and deck).  I am especially excited this year because of this!  My husband LOVES to mow so I don’t want to take over too much of the lawn (it still takes hours to mow so I don’t think there is any need for him to worry!).  Still, I have all sorts of fun garden ideas.  In the past I have taken pencil and paper and drawn a rough sketch of our gardens (at our old house) with what plants go where, and I plan to do that for our new yard too.  The former owners passed on this map of our yard and woods that I am also planning to use.  Isn’t it cute??

They named all the trails in the woods after places in the Lord of the Rings.  (They even have markers in the woods with the trail names on them!)  I think it is too funny.  : )

I’m not really all that good at drawing designs so I plan to use this heavily for my garden plans.  ( I think I may try to make some plans in Photoshop though.)  We have already changed some of this around, adding the gardens that are in green below.  The biggest one is a potential vegetable garden that we tilled last fall. 

I have grand schemes of adding a more formal garden here somewhere, perhaps in the front yard or directly behind the house.  I don’t want it to look pretentious and silly though so perhaps a cottage type garden would be more appropriate to the house style.  What do you think?  Keep in mind this is the front of our house in the summer:

I’m thinking a path to the front door surrounded by flower beds would be pretty, sort of like this:

(via This Old House)

Of course, that is more ambitious than I have time and energy for, but you get the general idea!  We’ll see how much of this possibility actually gets done.  : )  Right now there are two feet of snow over our whole yard so it seems very appealing to actually be able to work in the yard…not so much when it is 90 degrees outside and you’re sweating buckets. 

Any ideas as to what style of garden would go best with our house??  I’m leaning towards informal cottage because that is easiest and more like what I am familiar with…but a formal style could be a fun challenge!

Regardless…I’m busy poring over books and books filled with green stuff and dreaming of a green spring!