Digging In: Finding Garden Inspiration

By Jennifer Smith

Sparks of inspiration guided my gardening years before I planted my first garden. When I was young, my mom, a bit breathless and hot from a day in the garden would come into the blessed cool of the air-conditioned house. Looking at once tuckered and immensely satisfied, she painted a clear picture of what life dedicated to gardening would look like. 

Her frustrations tending a Cincinnati garden, frustrations we can all relate to — deer, rabbits and our glorious clay (I type with great sarcasm) were easily overlooked when her attention shifted towards her plants. Her father’s peonies, transplanted from northern Ohio to reside in her own garden, were more than plants. They were a connection to her father and her childhood. Her peonies taught me that plants were powerful anchors to what we hold most dear.

While playing in my grandparents’ back yard, under the cherry tree, was the constant scent of ground ivy. A meticulous lawn man my grandfather was not. It’s a scent not many like, but for me it conjures memories of summer afternoons in their back yard, reading under the tree while sampling the cherries and exploring the canal that lazily drifted past their back gate. Should I ever have a landscape with a lawn again, a bit of ground ivy will be most welcome.  

In a Salem, Massachusetts, garden I beheld a stand of Baptisia that was, to my untrained eye, more shrub than herbaceous plant. I was in awe that a plant could create such a magnificent stand in one year’s time. And those sapphire blue flowers: I knew they had to be in my garden, too. At the Missouri Botanical Gardens, in an unassuming area of the grounds, a lush planting of Bouteloua gracilis “Blonde Ambition” shimmered and swayed in the breeze. The large stand of one grass taught me that sometimes, simple is better. 

My connection with ferns started in the woods. On hikes along spongy trails or scrabbling about rocks along a stream in a deep valley — there were always ferns. Stalwart, unassuming, often overlooked by others for the more gregarious rhododendrons or delicate woodland phlox, it was always the ferns that caught my eye. And as you can expect, ferns reside happily in our shade garden. 

There’s more to designing your garden than which plant looks good with another. You could easily tell the story of your life with your plant selection: where you’ve traveled, who you’ve loved, hints of idyllic summer days and happy childhood memories. And let’s not forget, the garden you plant now is the foundation of memories your children, grandchildren or garden visitors will take with them when they set out to start their own garden. Fifty years from now, someone may be writing about your stand of prairie dropseed with a sprinkling of Liatris and seeing the monarch butterflies dancing about……and how it inspired their first garden. 

Jennifer Smith is an award-winning pollinator garden designer with Wimberg Landscaping.