My husband, Loren, and I have been gardening at our Beaumont-Wilshire home since 1976. One reason we were drawn to Beaumont-Wilshire was the old, well-established rock gardens. We saw gorgeous azaleas, yucca, basket of gold, and cotoneaster cascading over the red lava rocks.
Beaumont-Wilshire is a wonderful place to garden. The diverse house styles invite many types of gardens: roses, vegetables, parking strip gardens, sunny and shady. Lots of people have gardens. Space to garden is a treasure to be preserved in our neighborhood.
When I first tried to push my shovel into the original Alameda ridge soil, I almost cried. The river rock deposits of the Missoula floods make shoveling a challenge. But over the years I have realized that the good drainage of our native soils allows many plants to thrive. With the addition of compost from our compost piles, and from the great garden nurseries nearby, our plant choices have expanded greatly.
Our lawn is long gone. We have rock gardens, raised vegetable beds, a sunken garden that used to be a pond and recently a greenhouse. We have so many plants in pots that my friends say I have a pot problem. Woodland plants grow in the shade and dry land plants grow where the sun blasts in the afternoon. Competition between Loren and me is fierce for the space to grow the most sun-demanding plants: eggplants vs. eriogonum! What a treat to eat dessert by the blueberry bushes in the back garden in late summer.
I love walking the neighborhood watching gardens grow and change with the seasons and the years and talking to the creators of the gardens. And after conversing with a gardener, one always picks up an idea or two.
We will tell another gardener’s story in the next issue of the B-W Newsletter.