By Design

Hiring a professional to design our garden was very nearly a marital deal-breaker in our family.

We had just moved into a new home and were surrounded by nothing but bare dirt. Our budget was very limited.

My husband thought we should take the do-it-yourself approach: conserve our funds and put all that we had into plants. He figured a landscape architect was little more than a gardener with a business card. We could figure it out as we went along.

I put my foot down and said I'd rather invest in a good garden design, even if it meant we wouldn't be able to landscape as much at that early stage.

We battled it out. I, being the gardener of the family, wanted a truckload of new plants delivered on my driveway more than anything. But I knew in my gut that a good design plan would be a sound investment, guiding all our later garden decisions.

My husband, who tends to argue in favor maintenance-free cement patios and plants that don't attract bugs, aims more for convenience than nature's splendor. He reasoned the more we spent on a plan, the less we would have for plants and the longer we'd be living surrounded by dirt.

I held out and finally convinced him. We hired a landscape architect to design the whole yard, even though much of the plan was, at that time, lofty dreaming. For quite awhile, that drawing was the closest we came to having a yard. At least we could sit on folding chairs on the dirt and imagine.

Today, nearly 10 years later, we've finally completed the final phase of that landscape design. And because we took the time and used the resources to think ahead, we have a cohesive garden rather than a hodgepodge of plants.

A former neighbor of ours was the first on the block to build her pool when the whole neighbor

hood was new. We all looked with envy as her family splashed in their tropical pond that first hot summer while the rest of us had bare earth that required a whole lot of effort to keep out of the house.

Months later, this neighbor confided in us. She was lying awake at night,

haunted by a

m a d d e n i n g thought: they had put the pool in the wrong place. It was too close to the house. It cut off the back part of the yard and was shaded most of the day. Obviously, it was a little late to do anything about it.

It's good to have a plan.

That said, the beauty of a garden is that it is a living, breathing thing. It evolves and urges us to be flexible and to let it grow figuratively, as well as literally.

That's why the area I set aside as a fern shade garden has just inspired a border of primroses several years after it was planted.

The climbing iceberg roses might have worked 10 years ago, before the pepper trees matured, but now they are in shade. Next year I'll need to replace them with shade-loving climbers.

Living in a space, watching it season by season, reveals a garden's subtleties. It took us a couple of years to figure out where a fountain should go-and then another couple of years until we could afford to put one there.

Time convinced us, after fighting an existing oak tree's fallen leaves, which are so time-consuming to remove, it was better to concede and let them remain, a natural carpet underneath the grand tree.

Time also teaches what a garden's strengths and weaknesses are-what types of plants will flourish, what will fail.

Who knew that our little spot on the planet has a couple dozen frosty mornings each winter? After several years here, I know not to try any more bougainvillea, even though I long to have one of those deep magenta ones. Perhaps in my next life.

Turns out my husband is now a great fan of our garden. A garden, like a marriage, is a complex organism. Mine began with a plan and continues to surprise and inspire me.