A garden diary
daysingarden is a garden diary started in January 2015. The term “garden” encompasses several overlapping gardens: a vegetable garden, a kitchen or herb garden, flower gardens, perennial gardens, and native species gardens, as well as the weeds, insects, birds, and four-legged critters that share the space.
These overlapping gardens are located on a smallish suburban lot in zone 6a of New Jersey. When the adjoining house was built in the 1940s, lots were zoned at 50-foot frontage. For reasons lost in history, this garden lot, or side yard, was never developed. Today’s zoning requires a 100-foot frontage, so this lot is now too small for development in itself. That’s ok with me, since I value it as it is. Undeveloped municipal parks, or green acres, as they are known in New Jersey, are located both behind the property and directly across the street. Some trees in the yard are mature, while other trees and shrubs are newly planted. The vegetable garden has been in existence and under development for about 5 years. There is still much to do.
I hope that daysingarden will better focus my attention on the wonders of nature in a small pocket of space surrounded by a busy, developed world. I want it to bring together whatever information I gather through doing and observing, as well as reading and researching, in order to help myself and other gardeners who find this stuff interesting to be fruitful gardeners, live healthier lives, and do as little harm as possible to the natural world that still surrounds us even in busy places.