Like having a favorite and least favorite child , having a favorite and least favorite garden is hard to admit  , not that any of this applies to my kids, they all have their charms:)  . The overall garden here is divided into many spaces, all named for easy directions to spouse and children as to where I will be if, say, you can’t find your favorite leggings or you are wondering when and if dinner will be ready. There is The Dog’s Garden, The Pink Garden, Out Back, the Front Garden and the space that incorporates the entire long side yard toward the street is The Rock Garden.

The Rock Garden went in over the course of two years way back in the day when my body didn’t mind lifting what probably amounts to several tons of rock.  The rocks came from anywhere we could find them , construction sites, my cousin dropped a truck full off from his former in-laws yard., I even braved a rock pile in my brother-in- laws woods I knew for certain had snakes living in it to get more . It took lots of time and effort to get what most people curse and  have too much of here in New England.

The area where the garden is was initially lawn and I had planted some really fast growing willows to screen the street view with the intent of coppicing  a percentage f them annually and slowing adding in  evergreens.  And so the problems began.

If we ever have deer, that is where they enter, After loosing a few of the willow’s replacements I planted a super ugly low yew hedge right inside the willows to stop them. Deer LOVE yew, and so they get to the edge of the yard eat to their heart’s content, and forget that their initial mission was to destroy the apple tee 10 feet away by rubbing their antlers on it. Problem is , to be effective ,the yew remains un-pruned by me and in years of high deer pressure looks like scooped out yew bowls and in years without looks like a person with a really bad haircut. Behind it the willow drops branches like nobodies business and requires CONSTANT clean-up, but the deer don’t touch it, and so it remains.

One of the surviving evergreens, a hemlock, has been the victim of the other scourge over there; voles. These disgusting little creatures love to nest in the roots of conifers over the winter.  after several years of this the hemlock looked awful and I had to take it out this spring. The number of plants we have lost over there to voles  make me want to cry. Tricks that work elsewhere in the yard ( mousetraps, bait stations) don’t seem to have any effect in The Rock Garden at all.

To add insult to injury, this garden was planted before my daughter’s illness and anyone who has  a rock garden with dainty little alpines and other BS plants that need coddling can tell you that a two year absence of the head gardener will result in plant loss, and mayhem . Lewisias were the first casualties, ( they needed constant repositioning to remain on top of the rocks so they would not rot) followed by   a few dwarf conifers, and silenes,  and on and on it went. I filled in the spaces with whatever  divisions I could find on property with the plan of  redesigning at a later date, and then the rabbits arrived. The rabbit scourge is relatively new here and there are plants I am willing to go the extra mile for ie :those in my favorites gardens, but those in The Rock Garden ( which btw has no site line from inside the house or anywhere else in the yard being separated by  the pool enclosure and the garage)  are left to fend for themselves.

All these shortfalls  aside, the whole set up of a rock garden in New England is ridiculous. We have deciduous trees, loads of them . It is what we are known for.  You just don’t see 40 ft maples and oaks lined up on the sides of mountains . Alpine plants live in open wind swept areas , and to get that look here I have to clean up leaves…a lot…more than any reasonable person should ever have to ….and I hate it. The leaves catch in every crevice. They blow in after I am done with Fall cleanup and smoother the  succulents and sedums.  Because I spend my time over there muttering and griping, I have every single year due to inattention broken off every single  leave of the iris reticulata I forget is  there. During Spring clean-up I swear  I am going to round-up the whole thing and bring the lawn back, that is how much I hate it.

But like any mother when dealing with unexpected disappointment  in a child, I am trying. I go out there and try to look at it with love in my heart and figure out what to do to make it better.  I stand there and tell it how wonderful The Pink Garden is, and try to encourage it to imitate Pink’s success. Then I feel bad because each garden should follow it’s own path and not be compared to its siblings.  I ask it “what do you need from me to reach your potential? I want to help”  It just sits there and sulks , refusing to give me any insight. I am sure if it had headphones it would put them in and turn the music up drowning me out. I am at wit’s end with it .

I finished clean-up there over the span of 6 solid hours Tuesday then remarkably on Wednesday a package arrived from Klem’s Song Sparrow, one of my favorite mail order nurseries. It was plants I had ordered over the winter just for The Rock Garden  and my heart grew two sizes when I opened it. Two lovely dwarf conifers, picea abies‘Perry’s Gold’ and Pinus strobus ‘Sea Urchin”...ohmygoodness are they sweet!  There was also a helenium called ‘Short n Sassy’ and a new clematis called “My Angel’.  Excited, I went out to scout locations and happily removed an entire area that had been over run with thyme  and ripped out another that had been planted with daylilys of all things when times were really bad out there. While out there I noticed that the geum trifolium was coming into bloom  and  the shoots of the little daffodil ‘Baby Moon’ I added last year were appearing.   Things are looking up. So, for one more season,The Rock Garden gets to stay. It is totally on probation, completely under my critical and supervisory eyes. we shall see if it can redeem itself.

Do you have a garden space you struggle with?