Garden Fancy: Garden Timeline

My family bought our five-acre property in January 2008, and it was at that time that I started gardening. We've made many changes and additions to the property and to the garden areas since then.

This overview of the major garden additions that we've done serves as a quick reference for myself (so that I remember when these projects were done), but it could possibly be interesting for others as well.

To read in chronological order, simply read to the bottom of each page and click the next year's link at the end, or to find a particular year click on one of these links:

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026

Year	Major Projects or Events
2008 (see below)	purchased house, built garage, major grading, Herb Garden, east orchard
2009	north flower bed and northeast vegetable bed (next to Peony Border) behind house, truck garden, planted first roses
2010	made north flower bed into rose cutting bed, planted 6 crabapples in Big Yard
2011	built library addition and west terrace, remodeled front porch, new Addition Borders (Front, West, and North), new picket fence, replaced sod inside fence
2012	Pond Garden, Rainbow Border, White Garden on west terrace, laid out formal Kitchen Garden with raised parterre beds, planted Mock orange hedge
2013	Gazebo, redesigned north flower bed into mixed North Border, moved roses to northeast vegetable bed, fenced the chicken pen
2014	Yellow Garden, West Island, North Island, Gazebo Bed, cleaned and painted Garden Shed, new Grand Chicken Hotel
2015	reduced northeast bed, began planting Itoh & tree peonies there, painted picket fence (1)
2016	enclosed front porch into sunroom, enlarged Peony Border for irises and spring bulbs, redesigned North Border with evergreen Winter Border and curvy Summer Border in front, cleared Front Border to eliminate invasive Obedient Plant
2017	new Scented Garden around east patio, added small greenhouse on south of garage, reduced Yellow Garden and North Addition Border (1), reduced Rainbow Border, reduced Garden Shed Bed, eliminated LP Tank Bed, eliminated Gazebo Bed, cleared Front Border West (delphiniums) to eliminate runner grass
2018	Paradise Garden, built pergola over east patio, cleared Pond Garden beds of perennials and installed edging, eliminated Summer Border from North Border, reduced Peony Border back to Peonies only without irises, cleared garage bed west
2019	fenced Kitchen Garden, added bench on platform to Paradise Garden, reduced Yellow Garden (2), redesigned North Island with tree peonies, planted hostas on garage west bed
2020	Tropical Garden around east patio, replanted Pond Garden beds with petunias and dahlias, installed steel edging and bricks along Front Addition Border, discovered Volutella blight in Herb Garden boxwoods, pear tree damaged by August 10 derecho
2021	cut down every other boxwood in Herb Garden, installed steel edging and bricks around Yellow Garden, repainted white picket fence
2022	removed northeast section of white picket fence to improve view
2023	Triangle Garden, new front porch, redesigned west terrace, began eliminating Rainbow Border
2024	reduced North Addition Border (3), removal of dead ash tree limbs, wind storm destroyed metal pergola seat
2025	new vinyl white picket fence, finished eliminating the Rainbow Border, seeded grass in Mint Circle and part of North Border
2026	new paver path between Herb Garden and east patio beds, fixed Paradise Garden pavers displaced by new fence

2008

This Google Earth photo from 2005 shows roughly what our property looked like when we purchased it in January 2008. There was no garage, but there were a couple of decaying sheds, one to the right (east) of the house, and one on the southeast corner of the driveway. The driveway itself was a simple circular turn-around.

We bought our property in January 2008, and in spring and summer of that year, we began making the following improvements:

we had a garage built on the west side of the driveway, and enlarged the driveway turnaround area
we had wo decaying sheds torn down
we hired a man with a bulldozer to spend three days grading our yard: to provide a base for the garage, to remove and bury the concrete foundations from the two sheds, to make a somewhat level area for the the Herb Garden east of the house, and to smooth out the grass in the big yard south of the house and driveway
I laid out and planted the boxwoods outlining the formal Herb Garden to the east of the house
we planted the apple and other fruit trees for our orchard, on the far eastern edge of the property, where it curves out to the right in the photo

This was just the beginning of the mess: The whole yard was eventually scraped and graded, and it took a couple years for the grass to be reseeded and grow in properly. One of the concrete foundations that we had removed was still visible at the center of the photo, taken in 2008.

The Herb Garden in infancy. This was the first garden I planted here, and I had been planning to make a formal boxwood garden for several years. It took five years for the boxwoods to grow to mature size.