I inherited a flower garden unexpectedly... now what?

Hi all,

My son bought a house a few weeks ago, and I now rent from him... and it turns out that this house has a flower garden that is just totally freaking spectacular. Dozens of different flowers, beautifully landscaped...

It would be a crime to let the former owner's dream go to weeds. But I know absolutely nothing about what I'm doing. My wife of 27 years passed away just last week after a long battle with cancer, and in her last days I brought her fresh flowers... so I'm now very emotionally tied to this really magnificent garden, but I don't know a flower from a weed at this point, and I hardly even know where to begin.

I do have some reference books, but it takes hours and hours to identify anything, and so far I think I've only identified one weed (oxalis). In my grieving, I've found that gazing at the garden eases the pain more than I even imagined possible.

At this point, I'm not even sure what questions to ask, what priorities to start with, or anything. The previous owner cared enough about the garden to leave us a shed stuffed with every gardening tool and plant food imaginable, it seems, and I really want to learn some basics, but at this point it just seems overwhelming.

I'm certainly willing to put in the time and research, but if anyone has any ideas of what I should be doing first, I would most appreciate it. I can share photos as needed too, but any tips/ideas would be most appreciated. I never imagined being in this situation, and I never imagined that flowers and plants could do so much to help soothe a very hurting heart.

I live in Cincinnati, OH, USA, in case that matters (zone shows as 6A). But my main question is "what should I first learn/study/do?"

 

Hit your local library and pick up a few books. I am not sure what you use in Ohio but here in California the Sunset Western Garden book is our bible. Also if you have some free time think about attending a community college horticulture class. Around here they offer them on weekends during the spring and summer for home gardeners.

Also don't forget about your local nurseries they are usually very helpful and offer a lot of one on one help. Your local State Ag Extension is also a good resource.

Your first priority is to keep it watered until the rainy season. Hopefully it came complete with some sort of irrigation system.

Pictures would help a lot. We can identify a lot of the plants for you.

I've worked out a lot of problems and heart aches while gardening there is something so very basically cosmic about it. It centers me. I am glad you experience that as well in your time of need.

 

Thanks much for the response. I guess this is as good a place as any to note what I've done?

• I identified "oxalis" and lessened their visible numbers at least. It wasn't terribly invasive (as if I'd know). The ID was from "Weeds" by Alexander C. Martin. The other book I have is Reader's Digest "Wildflowers" from their "Guides to Recognizing Just About Everything in Nature" series.
• After dark tonight I watered everything. The previous owner had left us a great hose and attachment for "rain-like" watering, which made it a lot easier to do. While watering, I saw this really big raccoon, the largest I'd ever seen, walk across our porch- up one set of steps, across the porch, and off the other. Excuuuse me.
• Online I've found a lot of information, so much it takes time to "weed" through it. Then, once I found the really great-quality sites devoted to plant identification, I hit the stumbling block that deep-down I knew was coming. Terminology. I didn't know a petiole from my you know what ole, so next step was back to...
• Pull out my cherished but mostly-unused copy of "Biology" by Solomon/Berg/Martin. I sat in the chapel of these crazy wildflowers and began reading about plants, and finished the first chapter devoted to that topic. It discussed tissue systems and tissues, cell types, stuff at that level. I'm hooked, man, that's it. I've become the old guy in the garden with the hose and no hair, and I'm totally good with that.
• I also Dug out a copy of another textbook, this one "Inquiry Into Life" Sylvia S. Mader, which I've only skimmed, but I'll fully read the chapters there that deal with plants. At some point I purchased an old copy of "The Weekend Magazine Practical Gardening Encyclopedia," which seems to have good information.
• I read recently that 99% of the American "prairie" ecosystem is gone now, and that the grasslands we see today are not really much like what they were just a few hundred years ago. For some reason I'm particularly interested in plants that are believed to be native to that ecosystem. My physical location (southwestern Ohio, USA) is really east of there, but I'm sure a great many genera that were native to the prairie were also found here. But I think I have begun to have a vision for this garden, but what I'm hoping most of all is that the previous gardener has already done just that!

This is really an interesting topic to me all of a sudden. I took some pics recently but need to get them properly resized/optimized and uploaded.

Thanks again for helping a beginner. I'll have all winter to really read up on things, but want to be sure I don't make any major blunders in the kindtime. But this garden really is kewl. It made my dearest one smile and gaze dreamily in the last days of her illness, and everything I learn doing this I can also apply to my other interest/hobby: paleontology. I'd not yet studied plant fossils (I was into Ordovician brachiopods) at all, but once I have a clue on plant life, I may delve into those later geologic periods and lean more.

Not to over-babble, but during the saga of my sweetheart's illness, I had no interest in learning, reading, understanding- nothing. It just went dead. I mentally worried it might not return, though I hardly cared emotionally about that. I'm very "happy" to find my thirst for learning coming back to life, and coming back strongly. I've heard the phrase "flower power" for decades, and it didn't really have a personal meaning for me until this summer. Thanks for listening, to anyone still with me here!

 

The power of the flower is at it's heart the realization that to all life there is a cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth. And somewhere in the middle of it all is a beauty that is both individual and centered around a harmony with the community in which it exists. I am not a nasty neat control freak type gardener. I believe there is room for some weeds, pests the messy aspects life in every garden.

I just watched a scrawny mule deer crop my poppies down to stumps and enjoyed the visit from my big eared friend instead of jumping up and hollering at her. I am a quiet gardener and observer.

 

glad you foundsomething that helps your heart and that i even consider an art

 

Try and find a copy of the New Garden Encyclopedia edited by E.L.D. Seymour, my copy is dated 1936. It was my grandmother's and has notes all through it and the spine is coming off but it's one of my most favourite things. It covers botanical and common names, provides propagation information, common sense pest control and occassionally comes out with some whitty criticism.

It sits next to my recliner so I can pick it up and browse whenever I like. And I've added to my grannie's notes by inserting dated plant tags from plants I've purchased. Sometimes I find myself looking at those tags and thinking: What happened to that plant? or What was I thinking?

One plant in particular a passiflora vine totally took over my back yard. But the flowers were so unique and had kind of a citrusy smell that I tried to contain it and enjoyed it in all it's exhuberance. After ten years and a 3 year drought it finally crapped out. I miss it.

 

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for that one.

I'm still making progress. Yesterday I started a compost heap- it turned out that the previous owner had left a commercial compost bin, but it was filled with flowerpots, etc., so I spent a few hours emptying it, getting all the contents washed and stored, and started the compost with some yard kitchen veggie waste. A few online faqs helped

Then I spent a little time trying to ID a few plants, and found that we have some spectacular hibiscus flowers, and also daylilies. Still, the only thing I can find that I can definitely identify as a weed is oxalis.

This is more fun than I thought it could be!

I'm buried in stuff to do, but I will try to post some photos soon.

 

You're lucky sounds like it was well maintained. With your location Ohio I imagine those are perrenial or hardy hibiscus or perhaps Rose of Sharon?

Your compost bin is it one of those drums on a stand with mechanism for turning?

 

sunlion, is there a garden club in your area? im sure there is. contact your local extension agent and im sure they can point you in the right direction..

the reason i say this is because they always have folks more than willing to come out and spend time with you and give you some hands on help.i have never heard of one charging for this service,they do it for the love of gardening.
its so much easier to learn the ropes that way than through a book..

if i were you that is what i would do.

just my 2 cents on the subject..

 

SunLion,

maybe you don't have to know all their exact exact names or functions, at least not all at once.

Just sit with them (as you already do) and let them talk to your spirit and to your heart ... communicate, and walk with them in your dreams, and find out how to work with them in such ways.

This is a wonderful gift given to you. So much joy comes with it ... and healing is just about that.

Wishing you well

 

Excellent advice, and... I did get a little help from a neighbor who dropped by the other day. Now if I can only remember 'em... he came back later with a few plants to show me, and left one, a type of morning glory that he warned to think twice before actually planting.

In any case, I learned that there's a local garden group that has some sort of community garden or something, but I've not gotten in touch with any of them yet. He brought by some flyers for local stuff going on...

This neighborhood is really interesting. It's a small town of about 2,700 people (not really, we're really in the middle of a metro area of about 1.6 million people or so). It's in the middle of the larger city's most industrialized monstrosities of concrete and filth-belching (but long since abandoned) factories. Still, isolated like this, and with a huge greenspace just upwind to give us some fresh air, and a lot of vegetation "in town," it feels like a small town, and the residents seem to value that. I'm sure I'll be getting further help.

 

Just sit with them (as you already do) and let them talk to your spirit and to your heart ... communicate, and walk with them in your dreams, and find out how to work with them in such ways.

It's fascinating to watch all the activity around these plants, mostly from bumblebees. Eventually I'll get a good sense of which ones I like, which ones will grow nicely, and which will be truly invasive.

 

it's amazing that you're in the exact place you need to be SunLion. there is something truly healing about caring for a garden. best of luck to you.

 

Thank you. Of all the gazillion sites on the Internet, I decided that this would be the best place to find support for healing. Posts like yours are exactly why... thank you for commenting.

The garden is going fine, except for one patch I neglected to water heavily enough (I've learned that I've definitely been under-watering, but at least I'm figuring that stuff out!). I'm finally reading about "pinching off" and "deadheading," and it really is the journey that provides the pleasure, not merely what results.

 

Hi,
I believe there is room for some weeds, pests the messy aspects life in every garden.

I just watched a scrawny mule deer crop my poppies down to stumps and enjoyed the visit from my big eared friend instead of jumping up and hollering at her. I am a quiet gardener and observer.

I edited out the link. Sorry, can't have links in posts.

Peace,
poor_old_dad