Featured Garden: Chiz Gardens

My love of gardening came from my mom and my grandfather on my dad's side. Mom always had beautiful flowers in her garden when I was a child. She still has a lovely garden at 79 years young - especially her gorgeous angel trumpets which she has shared with me. My grandfather lived in Pennsylvania when I was a child. I loved visiting him and wandering around his vegetable and flower gardens. His vegetable garden was huge and he did everything with a spade or a hoe - no rototiller. The two flowers I remember the most from my grandfather's gardens are his poppies and sweet Williams.

Today my favorite flower is the poppy. First, it reminds me of my grandfather and his garden. Second, poppies are so beautiful and come in so many different varieties and colors. They are so delicate and remind me of crepe paper. Third, my mom gave me some poppy seeds from her garden. The spring after my dad died, I threw the poppy seeds into the memorial garden I made for my dad. Those poppies flourished that spring and were so beautiful. I'm sure my dad was sending us a message that he was watching over all of us. I'm also sure he knew those poppy seeds came from my mom. If asked this question a week from now, you may get a totally different answer. I love my flowers!

My favorite garden spot is my pond area. It was designed around a gazebo that I bought for another area in the yard. My husband thought the gazebo needed to be closer to the house and drew up a plan which included a sitting area, a pond,a stream, and a waterfall. I had asked for a pond for 20+ years and was totally surprised when I saw his design plan. My husband did all of the work by hand, no backhoe, because he didn't want to mess up the yard. Just the pond itself is about 25 feet long by 15 feet wide. I love to sit by the pond early in the morning, drink my coffee, and watch the sun rise - that's too early for my husband!

My greatest challenge in gardening is TIME. There needs to be more than 24 hours in each day for me to accomplish everything I would like to do in my garden. Along with the regular gardening tasks of planting, pinching, watering, weeding, harvesting, etc., etc., I enjoy making "garden art" and looking for special pieces which make my garden have "the Bohland personality." ("Chiz Gardens" comes from Charley, my husband, and Liz, me.)

The best tip I can offer to new gardeners is to go slow and plant what you like. I heard P. Allen Smith talk once and he was criticizing purple and orange together. As he was talking, I was thinking about my orange oriental poppies next to my purple irises. I thought they looked fine! A few days after this conference, a friend visited and told me how beautiful my orange poppies looked by my purple irises. Read, listen, learn, ask questions; but if you like it, DO IT!