We recently bought a house, one of whose major selling points was the beautiful garden. We found out later that the original owner had worked for Sunset Magazine and was responsible for the landscaping and most of the plantings. It's pretty much the garden we always wanted, but never knew how to make. So we now see it as our duty to maintain this lovely garden and improve it where we can. It's a duty, yes, but it's also a great pleasure to work in such surroundings and to see the fruits of our labor in such beauty. And after all the work is done, it's an oasis of calm and serenity.
It's obvious to us that all of the folks who have been in this house before us liked pretty much the same kinds of plants we like. We've both been fans of fuchsias for a long time but haven't had much luck growing them. Now we have a whole side yard full of mature fuchsias (at least five different varieties). Jim likes ferns — we have at least 18 species of ferns PLUS three or four different species of tree ferns. It took Jim the better part of six months just to identify all of the plants, with a lot of help from the folks at Dave's Garden , which we highly recommend as a site for anyone with an interest in gardening. Dave's Garden is an exceptionally helpful community of folks with just that interest, and you can get help there whether you're a noobie or an experienced gardener. Any errors in the identification are Jim's, not theirs.
The bottom link on the Our Pages menu at the left will take you to our Garden Album , which contains photos of nearly all of our plants. Enjoy! Jim apologizes in advance for the lack of organization of the album — some plants are under their scientific names, others under their common names, others under whatever took Jim's fancy when naming the pictures.
Jim's Favorite Gardening Links:
Dave's Garden — as mentioned, Jim's favorite gardening site. Try the Identification forum if you're attempting to figure out what kind of plant you have.
GardenWeb — also good, but a bit more intimidating than Dave's Garden for noobies.
The Gardening Launch Pad — is a very large but well-organized list of gardening links.