It has been quite a while since I last updated the blog. I usually enjoy waiting until the cold months to take time to reflect on the garden season. Below are the successes and failures of the year.

This past year was very exciting as Hope and Wildflowers linked arms as an Ambassador with an incredible non-profit Growing Kindness, to help spread more Kindness in our communities. I have learned so much about the Dahlia, as this was my second year growing this incredible flower.  Over the entire Summer and Early Fall, we were able to make and give out over 80 bouquets in our community from our garden and tubers from Growing Kindness.

To make this possible, we expanded the garden and laid down more weed barriers to make paths in the garden and reduce as many weeds as possible. I have to say I am very pleased with the results, and worth the investment and hard work.

We have learned so much this past year. Some of the successes were the amount of weeding was reduced, and the amount of produce and flowers tripled more than what we have ever grown. Increasing our flowers and using no pesticides, and adding more compost to our soil was a great improvement. The lessons learned from this year from the failures were the importance of sturdy support thanks to a storm that came by mid-summer with strong winds and snapped one of the dahlias off from its stem and knocked over many other flowers in netting. Also, an important lesson was spacing; some of the Zinnia plants had to be pulled out because they started getting mold/fungus on them from being to close together and not having enough airflow.

We were able to have a nice harvest to share at our little produce/flower stand, and looking forward to expanding and growing more as we continue to learn, grow, and add on.

Every year the garden presents its own form of challenges and lessons as Gertrude Jekyll said, a garden is a grand teacher.

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. -Gertrude Jekyll