aspenhill's blog: Collections

Thinking about snowdrops the other day had me contemplating my propensity for collecting. I realize that collecting things has been a natural tendency for me since I was a child. I can't seem to help myself. It always starts with a single item that comes my way. Either I really like it and intentionally want more or it can be spontaneous, stumbling on a second item that is in keeping with the first. Whatever the inspirational start, I immerse myself in finding information about a new idea for a collection, and I love the thrill of finding something new to add to the collections that I've established. It was a foregone conclusion that it expanded to include my gardens, running the gamut of all things gardening related.

I have a great collection of gardening books and magazines that fill my library shelves and bookcases. Books about garden design, beautiful books illustrating specific gardens, garden how to topics, general topics such as trees, vines, perennials, herbs, vegetables, containers, etc..., entire books devoted to a single genus, and a special book on the correspondence between two lifelong gardening friends Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence.

With the advent of Pinterest, I started collecting gardening quotes. It is hard to write my own words to describe how I feel about gardening, so when I find a quote that resonates, I pin it. I find myself perusing the board often to reflect on the thoughts.
https://www.pinterest.com/aspe...

I absolutely love garden accents. With gardens as large and rambling as mine are, I know I can collect away and not be in fear of overdoing it. Garden trellises and border fences, benches, bird baths, urns, statuary, plaques, and pops of purple are all game. I know I'll never stop. It is funny, I rarely head out to specifically look for something, but I know it the moment I see it and it doesn't take much to figure out the perfect garden spot for it. It is so hard to pick a favorite, because when I look at each one in turn, IT is the favorite LOL.

And for plants themselves, what can I say? I have acquired a lot of plants over the years, over 800 different ones after a quick look at my Plant List, and that is just since I started record keeping there. There are a lot of genus/species onesies and twosies throughout my gardens, but then there are those that are enough in numbers of different cultivars to be considered collections. I was wondering how many different plant collections I actually have, and came up with this list:

Bulbs and Perennials: Ferns, Japanese Anemones (just recently reclassified as Eriocapitella? what is up with that???), Aquilegia, Astilbe, Clematis, Epimedium, Gallanthus, Geranium, Helleborus, Hemerocallis, Hosta, Iris, Lilium, Narcissus, Paeonia, Pulmonaria, Tradescantia, Tricyrtis, and Trillium.

Shrubs: Calycanthus, Camellia, Hydrangea, and Rhododendron.

Again, hard to pick favorites because they are ALL favorites, but at the top of the list for me has got to be Galanthus, Epimedium, Helleborus, Narcissus, and Paeonia. Hosta is a favorite too, but I am phasing them out because of the horrible deer problem. It saddens me to see the leaves completely eaten to where only the spikey gnawed off stems are left. Still not sure if it is something worth battling over and the effort it will take with no real hope of winning.

Collecting, Collecting, Collecting onwards.... Definitely a big part of my designing passion

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