There are moments when I lose myself in the garden and think, yes, this looks great and we are nearly done! Then I look around and realize I have barely scratched the surface. Gardening is not for the impatient. While I have been carving out new sections of the gardens, an hour here and a few hours there, even if I had a team of workers with a month dedicated to the task, it would still be a continuous work in progress.

What keeps me going is visualizing how the landscape will look when it’s all in place. Where others see blank spaces, I see stands of pollinator plants, swathes of grasses and thick stands of shrubs bedecked in berries. It’s exciting, and encouraging, to see how far the tiny, rather unimpressive plugs have come so far this year: and it’s only early July. The other day I took a quick trip to our Focal Garden at Ault Park to weed and take stock of the plants. After spending time in a very young garden, I was taken aback by the mature, established garden that awaited me. Rattlesnake Master in bloom at eye height, Rudbeckia Maxima with impressive yellow flowers and so many coneflowers and Monarda in bloom. It was, in a way, a glimpse into the future of our new Route 50 Pollinator Garden. 

Some Early Wonders: This space was lawn and old shrubs, not a flower in sight. We started with potted plants to add some visual weight and then have been adding plugs to fill out the spaces. It’s pleasing to see hummingbirds visiting the bee balm and a pair of Goldfinches perching on the young Rudbeckias and Cosmos early in the morning. 

The Agastache has been bedecked with bumble and honey bees and a tree frog has made herself at home in the gardens.

 It’s not fallacy, if you plant it they will come.