I grew up with several plants that I now have quite a sentimental attachment to. They're all pretty common, but I really love having them in my garden. One of them is the pink bleeding heart --I've planted one every place I've lived --even back in college as a grad student, sharing a house with other students. When I moved to this area for my teaching job, I lived in a ground floor apartment in a big complex with a patio. I asked if I could plant some flowers, and I left a bleeding heart there too, when Rob and I moved to this house. Sometimes I wonder if it's still there. I now have three pink and two white bleeding hearts in the various gardens around the house.
Another plant I really love from childhood is the flowering quince. I tried to find it at nurseries and online, without any luck. Then a friend here, who has a horticultural degree and did landscaping work for a while (she's now running her own farmette, raising mostly chickens and vegetables) mentioned that her neighbor had a flowering quince that kept creeping into her yard. She brought me a stick she dug up from one of these encroachments five or six years ago, and it is now firmly established. With our amazingly warm spring, it is bursting with buds, and looks fabulous.
Do any of you have plants in your garden because of a former attachment?
There are a few flowering quince bushes within sight of my house and I love them! What a color. There was a bleeding heart at my Mom's house at one time, I wonder what happened to it. I have a sentimental place for redbud trees and also for geraniums (the big red old-fashioned pelargoniums). I'm looking forward to watching my little redbud grow old along with me...
ReplyDeleteThat is gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteI love bleeding hearts, and have planted several here. I'm looking forward to their arrival, which should be soon.
Bleeding heart is one of the plants I want to buy and put in my garden here. I also really want to have a few roses, because they remind me of my mom & her husband.
ReplyDeleteThe former owner of our house put in 3 little hydrangea bushes. They aren't in a good spot at all -- I'm going to have to find a better spot and move them. I grew up with a huge hydrangea bush in my backyard.
Is that your house in the background? It looks like an old farmhouse in this picture.♥
It is our house, and it is an old farm house --it was built in 1845, one of the first buildings in the local area. Apparently it was built with green timbers, and there isn't a straight line in it anywhere :-)
DeleteA good many of my plants are from friends and family, so most of my garden has some sort of sentimental attachment. Hellebores and lillies of the valley because they were in my bouquet when I got married, the blue hostas from Aunt Loretta, Granny's black eyed susans, just some of the many. I grew up with a big old pink dogwood in the front yard and I now have a big old pink dogwood in the front yard.
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved here I took 1/3 of everything I'd planted in our old yard and brought it along. The new owners of our old house dug up most of my garden and threw it away, so I'm glad I did. I have plants from so many people's gardens and the old friends who came along with us please me every year.
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