A few days ago I was chatting with a local friend who was sharing how she "could not wait" to get going with her annuals in her garden now that it was starting to warm up.
I know the feeling! That's why winter here is typically so pleasant... even though we get those snow storms and cold, grey days we are blessed with these breaks where the sun shines and the air warms just close enough to sweater weather that you feel like spring is on its way. But, it's only the first week of February. Don't be fooled. We will still have winter lows and weeks here and there of full-on winter weather for a couple more months. And our last frost date is right around Mother's Day. It was hard to break it to my friend who was so excited and from Minnesota. The consolation is that there is a ton of fun pre-season stuff to work on right now to get everything ready for the season. During this "dormant" season, don't be fooled into thinking that there's nothing going on in the garden over the winter! In fact, while the pace slows down significantly, this is often the best time to build the basis for a hugely successful and healthy landscape in the coming season. Plus, spreading out the work over several months makes it a bit less taxing on you.
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After working with a client to design and create a stunning garden or landscape, I check in often. More often initially, and then a bit less frequently through the first year.
The success of a landscape is really mostly about a fantastic design, and then the ongoing maintenance of it over the long haul. While the installation is often the most exciting step in the process, it's not going to be successful unless it's cared for properly every month and for the years to come (and well designed in the first place). We don't do garden maintenance at The Whiskey Porch, but I wanted to put together a series of garden keeping checklists to help keep you on track. Whether you are going to do it all yourself, or bring in a maintenance crew to do much of it for you, these monthly guides should be useful to you if you live in and around Prescott, AZ. After working with a client to design and create a stunning garden or landscape, I check in often. More often initially, and then a bit less frequently through the first year.
The success of a landscape is really mostly about a fantastic design, and then the ongoing maintenance of it over the long haul. While the installation is often the most exciting step in the process, it's not going to be successful unless it's cared for properly every month and for the years to come (and well designed in the first place). We don't do garden maintenance at The Whiskey Porch, but I wanted to put together a series of garden keeping checklists to help keep you on track. Whether you are going to do it all yourself, or bring in a maintenance crew to do much of it for you, these monthly guides should be useful to you if you live in and around Prescott, AZ. When thinking about your garden and landscape, it's common to want to grow and enjoy plants that you are accustomed to. Either from where you most recently lived, or from where you grew up. We all have that nostalgia for a familiar landscape. But, one of the most frequent questions I hear from newcomers to the Prescott, AZ area is that they struggle with finding the appropriate plants that will not only grow, but thrive and become well established without a lot of fuss. One of the core refence tools for gardeners and landscape design, is known as the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones. There is also an index by Sunset Magazine, and then there are climate and heat tolerance zones as well. Lot's of different indicators that can be helpful, but for this post I am going to focus on the USDA Hardiness Zones. My advise: Know and embrace your garden zone! Keep reading for all the details. I've been fixing, building, renovating, and remodeling most of my adult life.
Early on, I would jump right in and just start, then do the next thing, and so on. Over time, my experiences have taught me that if you've got enough drive and persistence (and lots of luck) you can pull that off. Kinda sorta. But I've learned some really important lessons about the planning process that can make it less frustrating and hopefully a lot less drawn out. And I wanted to share those. This week we are thinking about and celebrating local places, local-ness, the beautiful scenery we are lucky to have, and picnics. Let me explain! Tomorrow is International Picnic Day, not that we need a special holiday to make a picnic worthy of celebrating. And since we want to share time with Dad on Sunday, I think we should all spend the day outside with our family and friends enjoying a picnic. There's nothing that sounds bad about that, right? Consider that aside from some well-earned downtime, there are health and general wellness benefits too!!
Keep reading to see my list of local Prescott picnic-worthy spots. ~ post continues below ~ You know you need to tackle a few things in your home (or garden) to get it dressed up a bit, but it's so overwhelming and confusing that you just never really get going and it drags on and gets stale. It can get confusing with all the media and buzz about what the latest trend is and what's in and what's out. If you're not a do-it-yourselfer and want to hire professionals to do the work, the truth is you still need to be able to articulate what exactly you want to do and in what priority. It can be really hard to know where to start. And maybe even more importantly, how to bring it all together so that it makes sense when you are done can be very elusive. The result can be some false starts or even not getting started at all because you aren't confident with how to get going. I get it. ~post continues, click Read More ~ Every autumn we do a monthly cottage feature, to share with you the wonderful local inspiration of other homeowners in the Prescott, Arizona area. #cottagesofprescott For October, we got to check out Vyne House, in downtown Prescott. ~ post continues, click Read More ~ Every autumn we do a monthly cottage feature, to share with you the wonderful local inspiration of other homeowners in the Prescott, Arizona area. #cottagesofprescott For September, we are starting with a sweet downtown cottage. ~ post continues, click Read More ~ This is a new summer monthly feature for us. #gardensofprescott So, for the month of July, just to kick things off, I've decided to start with my own garden here at Juniper Hill Cottage - in downtown Prescott. Although this is a standard sized downtown lot, we've packed a lot into the space including meandering walks, covered porches, patios and gazebos, tons of shade, and even a completely custom built kitchen garden where I am growing over 100 different herbs, almost entirely from seed. One of the biggest highlights that make it feel luxurious is the creation of many small garden "rooms" and extensive integration with the massive old trees we are fortunate to have (13 of them at last count) and some outstanding views. ~ post continues below, click read more ~ |
AuthorHey there. I'm Miriam ~ and I've been doing this my whole life. It's my passion. Categories
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