How this country gardening thing got started

I’m a keen gardener and garden writer and photographer, living on a country property of 10 acres with ridiculously big gardens. We moved here because we had outgrown our little 30×100 foot city property. I had fallen in love with ornamental grasses and easy-care, contemporary garden styles, and I wanted more space to try out plants and design schemes.

- Yvonne Cunnington, author of Basic Gardening and publisher of Flower-Gardening-Made-Easy.com. Contact me directly here.

About our country garden

When we bought our property near Hamilton, Ontario, in May 1998, it was so neglected that friends thought us crazy for taking it on. On the plus side, it was located across from a golf course and a sprawling ranch, so it had a terrific view. Our friends might have been right, but the location was ideal for my husband’s job, and at least the house was livable.

We were younger then, so we figured we had the energy to undertake a huge landscape makeover. My design inspiration came from the new wave garden styles of Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf and American landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden. They got me hooked ornamental grasses, which have become my country garden signature plants.

We created our garden a few steps at a time. The first summer was spent in cleanup and bulldozer mode, and adding tile drainage. Before we could consider any real landscaping, we had to remove masses of burdock, brambles, poison ivy and buckthorn. We also cleared broken-down fences and concrete and stone from the farm’s original barn, which was long gone.

In 2000, we turned a hayfield into a native plant prairie. This wildflower meadow is now my favorite part of the “garden”. It’s a magnet for birds and butterflies and looks amazing from mid-summer into fall.

We enlarged a small pond to help with drainage and planted native wetland species around it. After construction of an addition to the house, we planted the beds around it with shrubs, perennials and ornamental grasses. My husband wanted use the rocks from the old barn foundation, so he created a raised-bed rock garden.

Our country property has become fantastic lab for trialing plants and the garden design ideas that I write about. The gardens are at their most colorful from July and August through fall. This is when many gardeners hang up their trowels for the season, but it’s the part of the season that I love best.