Six years ago, my garden....

I moved to this garden 6 years ago. The house was 24 years old but it had been rented for the previous ten. What existed of the garden had been neglected.

In the backyard, previous gardeners had planted a back hedge of cedar and it had grown enormously tall and thick out of neglect. At one end of the hedge, there is a giant chestnut tree and at the other, a bed with a red gangly rhododendron (like griersonianum) and a sickly aspen. Two old apple trees were covered in moss and full of suckers. The front door was blocked by a bed of white rhododenron, piersis (formosa forrestii) and a sad boxwood. That was it, except for the thick carpet of mossy lawn.

There was no fence in the front yard between our lawn and the neighbours. Because we are in a corner, the combined lawns gave the appearance of grandeur. However, within the first month, I noticed that the neighbour used the lawns to back his truck over in order to access his backyard. There were deep tire grooves in the parts where the truck needed traction. I mean, if he had asked for permission, I guess I wouldn't have gotten so uptight. But when I happened upon the truck in my frontyard, I decided on the stop to fill the space with as many plants as I could.