The View From Inside

Very few of my garden designs come out the way I planned. The plants usually do their own thing, won't cooperate, or simply don't understand what I want of them.

But this garden is starting to come together the way I envisioned. It's a curved bed in front of the dining room windows, and I meant it to be seen from inside the house more than from the street. And that's exactly what's happening.

Our windows are very big and very low, so it's easy to see the whole garden from indoors. The flowery things are closer to the house -- the "back" of the garden -- rather than in front facing the yard. So the view presents toward the windows and toward me as I sit at the table and type this.

Right now it's the yellow 'Swallowtail' columbines that are having a moment and some red 'Splendens' coralbells (heucheras) are sending up red spikes. A line of blue fescue grasses have set fluffy flower heads.

I see it all from my window.

Later in the season there will be upright cones of white speedwells that are looking healthy and green right now, tucked among the coralbells. There's a very big wandflower (gaura) that fills in and bounces in breezes. And my new hollyhocks should be really visible along the fence by the rain barrel. Those will be showy from both the street and from inside the house.

In late summer, someday, a fall anemone will be big and shrubby and fill the window with bushy foliage and tall wands of pretty flowers. That plant is taking a while to get going, though. I have to wait for it to bulk up.

Another slow starter is an 'Iriquois Beauty' aronia shrub that will someday fill the second window with lovely foliage and with the earliest flowers in spring. It flowered this April, and although it is still a tiny twig, I loved seeing these sweet blooms from inside the house on a cold spring day.

This garden is in a difficult spot in shade under a big cottonwood and an aspen, and in competition with the roots of those trees. It's fenced off from access to the hose faucet, so it's a process to water it. When it does rain, if the nearby rain barrel is already full, this garden floods.

But it is becoming what I saw in my mind, and I am enchanted with how it almost comes into the house, filling those big windows with a nice view. I look at it all day long.