Look past Imperfections and Focus on Beauty
When we agreed to open our garden for over 2000 visitors (+ 1 chicken🤣 but that’s another story), we had no idea what we were signing up for.
Luckily my wise son taught me a lesson:
‘Look past imperfection — focus on beauty’
I haven’t written for awhile. My hands have been dirty - literally. Deep in the soil, planning, planting, weeding, moving, trimming, removing, dead-heading, panicking, calming, re-planning… You see, last year we agreed to open our garden for a series of garden tours.
When I said yes, I had no idea of how much work it would be. How many projects we’d need to tackle. When I said yes, I was looking at it on its ‘best’ day. Not on one specific day.
I didn’t realize back then how difficult it would be to predict what specific flowers will be in bloom, what will be faded, and what the weather will be on that specific day a year later.
Because, of course, a garden is always changing—and weather is unpredictable.
Our garden is young - planted in 2023 and our project list is long. So we have been living and breathing gardening for the last 3 months (thankfully with the help of our son!).
As we ticked items off our list, we started to believe that we could whip our garden into show-ready form by the first tour.
but, of course, a garden is always changing—and weather is unpredictable.
A month before ‘show time’ unusually heavy rain and wind whipped through, breaking off a major branch from a stunning Japanese Maple in our Serenity Garden. Not only was the tree now mis-shapen, but a vignette that used to be bathed in dappled shade, was now blasted with hot afternoon sun… so I had to rip out the shade plants and start over with something that could handle the heat. Below was what it looked like before the Baby Tears and Oxalis burned in the sun:
A week and a half before our first tour, we had a blast of record high heat and sunshine. The roses all bloomed at once - making Jerry’s Rose Garden sing and adding a chorus of color throughout my Cottage Gardens. Their colors beautifully complemented by the pinks and purples of foxglove, iris, French Lavender and Nepeta scattered throughout.
It was lovely.
But of course - the blooms faded, petals fell.
And all of the colors I’d so carefully placed? They had either faded away, or hadn’t yet bloomed.
Of course, Mother Nature wasn’t finished tossing out challenges: just a couple of days before show-time, another rain storm rolled in. Everything that wasn’t staked, kissed the ground. Out came the secateurs once again.
Now I was in a panic. Forecast was for off-and-on rain and wind throughout the weekend. Plus heavy clouds. Would the visitors choose to stay home? Perhaps that was all for the best, because there was no chance of a sudden burst of blooms. But what if people did show up?
My son told me that the garden didn’t need to be perfect to be beautiful.
“But perfectionism is in my DNA!”
“No Mom, it’s just a story that you have reinforced in your neuro-pathways. What you need to do is carve out a new pathway and reinforce it”
So I wrote the following in my phone and every day at 9:00am I get a pop-up:
‘Look past imperfection - focus on beauty’
And then I ran out and bought just a few colorful plants from the nursery. While my hubby graciously potted them up, I continued to frantically deadhead, and stake anything that might get further knocked over by more rain. Then we added dabs of color throughout. And voila!
The rain dissipated. The sky lightened and the greens of the gardens glowed.
We opened the gates… and hundreds of visitors poured in!
plus the neighbors chicken:
Sure, the roses weren’t in their prime, but they still had loads blooms and visitors were in awe of how healthy and beautiful they were (roses are Jerry’s domaine, so you’ll have to ask him how he does it).
They loved the colors.
They loved the opulence of our Cottage Gardens. AND that each section had a different color scheme. Yes, people migrated to their favorite: Silver Garden in shades of grey; Bohemian Garden with rich, deep jewel tones; Romantic Garden in dreamy pastels; Serenity in shades of off-white and green.
They loved entering our gardens through a forest trail rather than a driveway.
They laughed at the neighbors chicken who was the first to enter and last to leave
They loved our old growth Douglas Fir.
And the swing in the old Doug Fir that my son made to replace one that was there in my childhood.
They lingered and explored.
They sat and drank in our views.
Then visited again the next day, because they ‘couldn’t take it all in the first time’
They were in awe that my hubby and I had designed, created and maintained all of our gardens. By ourselves. In only 3 years.
I’m sure folks saw our unfinished projects, the weeds we missed, the faded blooms I failed to nip off, the imperfections.
But they chose to focus on beauty.
And I promised my son I would too.
‘Look past imperfection and focus on the beauty’
The REAL beauty?
My hubby, son and I working together in this place that we love.
P.S.
Take a peek at our garden through the eyes of this AMAZING garden designer / YouTube star!
