It’s easy to look at pictures in gardening magazines, Pinterest, and Instagram and feel a bit discouraged when you compare them to your own garden.   At least I feel that way — there’s a big gap between where my garden is and where I want it to be.  I still have a lot of plants to buy, work to do, and time to wait for young plants to mature.  But it hit me yesterday that I have only been on my gardening journey for one year — and I’ve made an incredible amount of progress!

This picture was taken one year ago yesterday:

It was the first expansion of the garden beyond my small hosta garden (unseen, to the left of this area).  The rest of the garden area was nothing but overgrown weeds and underbrush, with no real plan for how to transform the space.   A quick refresher on what it looked like:

You can see my little hosta garden in the top left photo, the “dark spot” in the middle with a few green specks on it.  I had never really considered myself a gardener and got a little overwhelmed when looking at the big space, so I originally thought that my garden would be pieced together in tiny sections like this over the course of many years.

But then my gardening addiction took hold.  The thrill of creating something beautiful in a space that was overgrown and neglected pushed me to continue the expansion throughout last summer.  If it was a nice weekend, you could bet I would be out working on the garden, even in the 90° heat of July.  If it was a nice day during the workweek, I was dreaming of being out in the garden.  I had a new goal in life: to create a garden so beautiful that I receive requests to be on a garden tour or featured in a magazine.

By the end of summer, I had “finished” a section on the north end…

…and planted a few other sections towards the south end:

In terms of total square footage, I had made some decent planting progress!   The area still looked pretty rough, though, because I left a big section in the middle where I planned for a water garden and I hadn’t finished the garden paths with gravel.

Well, those deficiencies were both remedied in the past 6 weeks.  At the beginning of March the water garden was installed, and in the last week we finished the main garden paths.   So to recap, in the past 365 days, my garden progress consists of:

-close to 200 perennials and shrubs planted
-tons and tons of limestone dug up and used to edge the garden
-countless yards of mulch spread
-water garden installed
-about 150 feet of crushed limestone garden path laid

In one year, my small 10’x15′ hosta garden has expanded into this:

Holy mega garden, Batman!  While it looks a little empty right now due to our late spring this year, it’s pretty crazy to think of the transformation IN ONE YEAR!!!

Now, I still have plenty of work to do this year: plant around the water garden, finish the very south end (you can see it’s not pretty), replace plants that didn’t make it through the winter, and a good deal more.  But this is why I recommend taking LOTS of pictures as you create your own garden; it’s so easy to get caught up in what is still left to do, and forget all of the progress you’ve already made.  Comparing pictures from April 14, 2017 and April 14, 2018 amazes me.

Now that the “bones” of the garden are complete, I get to spend this spring and summer doing fun, relatively light work.  (Trust me, after you’ve moved that many tons of limestone and crushed limestone, planting shrubs, perennials, and annuals is “light” work!)  I’m hoping tonight is the last hard freeze for the season so I can get down to some serious gardening.

In other garden updates…

Some of my ‘Lollipop Fruit Punch’ impatiens seedlings are starting to bloom already (the blooms are bigger than the plant!)  The color is just as amazing in person.  Can’t wait to get these beauties planted in the garden.

I added my very first plants to the water garden this week!  (Thanks to my mom for the free divisions!)   I can’t explain the pure joy I felt while planting my very own water garden plants.  Granted, it probably helped that it was an 80° day, I had Jack Johnson radio playing, and a margarita was waiting for me on the deck.

The hostas have started to emerge!  Exciting, but I’m a little worried as I know they don’t like the freezing temps.  I’ve covered them with pots at night, but with tonight’s low of 26° I may mulch them as well.  The ‘Empress Wu’ have been the earliest to emerge.

And finally, it snowed for the 3rd straight Sunday in April.  Goodness gracious.  At least the water garden looks pretty under a dusting of snow.

Over the next few weeks I have some pretty fun gardening adventures planned, so stay tuned for some posts that are about something other than my garden!

How is your garden looking so far this spring?