About Beth

Here I am in Bath, England in 2019.
England has such amazing gardens!

Thanks for visiting Garden Fancy! I'm not a professional gardener or an expert anything, but I am captivated by beautiful gardens and would like to share with readers my own gardens and how they change over time as I experiment with new plants and become a more experienced gardener.

I have not gardened for all that long, only since moving to five acres in rural southeastern Iowa in 2008. Before that, I found myself becoming increasingly interested in garden photos and books (I guess I came to gardening through books, not through doing gardening). But gardening is now my primary hobby, one that gets a bookish person like me outdoors, gives me exercise and allows me to strive toward making my surroundings more beautiful.

In my gardens I love to have masses of lovely flowers, particularly scented flowers: Colorful spring bulb displays to banish winter's grays, the glory of late spring and early summer perennial flowers, followed by late summer annuals from seeds and starts, and ending with late-season roses and a few autumn perennials. My efforts to improve the results in my own gardens are still ongoing. I prefer old-fashioned "common" flowers -- they're common because most of them are easy to grow and flower generously. But I try to experiment with new seeds and plants every season -- who knows how wonderful a less-well-known cultivar could turn out to be?

About me personally: I was born and raised in a college town in central Iowa, and I'm married to a very nice veterinarian who helps me with the more brawn-requiring tasks in my gardens. He also grows vegetables, feeds chickens and sheep, and drives his 1940 Ford 9N tractor when it's needed for garden maintenance. We have a teenage daughter and son, whom I home school, and who (under duress) occasionally help in the garden. We also have two cats, an aging Jack Russell dog who allows me to garden somewhat deer- and rabbit-free, and the above-mentioned chickens.

I'm the author of Iowa Gardens of the Past: Lost and Historic Gardens of Iowa, 1850-1980, published in 2020, a book about the history of ornamental gardening in Iowa, and hope to one day write and publish other garden books about Iowa and other places too.

I hope you will enjoy reading about my learning about gardening and my attempts to make my own gardens more beautiful (although, as you can see from the photo below, I am already surrounded by beauty, regardless of my gardening efforts). I realize that I'm very lucky to live in such a beautiful spot, and hope I can share it with readers.

Thanks for reading!

-Beth