In the Garden with Maria

For awhile after relocating to central Florida, I grieved for my large beautiful garden at my former home near Birmingham, Alabama. I love it here in Florida, but this blank-slate yard with no trees, i.e., no shade, was difficult for awhile. Immediately, I began ripping out turf grass, and putting in planting beds. Soon, neighbors stopped by to chat, and almost always asked me about my flowers, and what to plant here. So began this online adventure.

This website began as a blog to answer the gardening questions of my neighbors’ and friends’ who are either new to gardening in the Deep South of the United States, or completely new to gardening. It has quickly outgrown the simple question-and-answer style of blog, and morphed into a website about gardening in the South, and sometimes more specifically, about gardening in central Florida.

After previously having a garden that was too large to manage alone, I had to accept the fact that I needed a smaller yard. When we moved to Florida in late 2012, we gained an extremely small blank-slate yard, except for the builder’s “landscape package” out front. I was so excited about creating a beautiful front yard, and an equally beautiful, yet private backyard hideaway, that I couldn’t wait to get started. The first thing I did was to rip out all those “builder-grade” shrubs. The front is coming along more slowly than the back, probably because I was anxious to have the back enclosed as much as possible to keep our little Maltese dog, “C.C. ” contained.