Unfortunately, I was so shortsighted I couldn’t imagine planting anywhere on the property outside of the strange patch of scraggly grass East of the well-house - and with vegetables, not something as “useless” as flowers.

As Jess puts it, he “auditioned” the idea of installing a flower garden there by promising me a couple chairs and a bistro table to “sip my tea”. His clever appeal to my favorite me-time activity eventually won me over. I gave a reluctant go-ahead, the name stuck, and construction of the Tea Garden commenced.

When we first moved in, I flat out rejected the notion of a garden “just for flowers that you can’t even eat”. Over the course of about four years Jess showed me what a flower garden could be, and how it can feed a part of me in a way I’d never realized before.

Here’s basically what we started with - a scraggly, shapeless patch of dirt that we fenced off from our then free-ranging chickens (inherited with the property much to our delight) with some chicken wire and wrought iron sticks. Yes, they still got in the garden, we didn’t realize how high they could jump, and even flutter since we have never trimmed our birds’ wings.

The year was 2017, it was finally spring, and FINALLY warm enough to plant something in the ground with even the slightest chance of survival.

5/28/2017 A perfect metaphor for our relationship, as we would discover over the course of the next few years. Water your partners, help each other grow.

Jess humored me and helped me plant some tomatoes; the first ever addition to our Official Real Life Garden. Going from a couple buckets on a dark apartment complex sidewalk to thousands of square feet of options may have been a bit bigger of a transition than I realized. As Jess confidently planted a few flowers here, a few bulbs and rhizomes there, I got more and more confused about what I wanted for the space.

But the tomatoes grew! And so did the flowers. Slowly but surely our garden started to take root…

And before we could blink Jess was jumping for joy at his first dahlia bloom

And his first mole kill…a major victory in the constant landscaping war the two were now waging.

Before we knew it our little garden was at it’s peak - Jess’s carefully planned and managed mini wildflower meadow complemented the spontaneous shoots of phlox and dahlia blooms, and my meager tomatoes quietly died rather than compete with their glory.

So, naturally, what do I do? Try again with more vegetables, of course! In an effort to jumpstart what I envisioned as a thriving fall vegetable patch, I planted potatoes, beets, and greens galore. We still have potatoes and that Russian Red Kale making yearly appearances in the tea garden, despite Jess’s best efforts.

#SorryNotSorry

Fall and winter passed us by, and what few seeds sprouted died off in the frost. In an ironic metaphor for how the rest of my life was going, I once again shoved some plants into the ground without care or attention, and they all died. In retrospect it’s pretty amazing how reflective our gardens were of our own struggles as newlyweds and homeowners. We had a lot to figure out, and a lot to learn from each other.

5/31/2018 I tried planting strawberries and brussel sprouts in the same plot in which no other green had survived. It never occurred to me to pick a different spot - that’s obstinance for ya.

7/11/2018 Well, almost everything died - pictured here is a renegade potato plant and surprise Russian Red Kale variant with rounded leaves instead of frilled leaves. I swear this kale would survive the apocalypse. The kale, and maybe a couple potat… — 7/11/2018 Well, almost everything died - pictured here is a renegade potato plant and surprise Russian Red Kale variant with rounded leaves instead of frilled leaves. I swear this kale would survive the apocalypse. The kale, and maybe a couple potatoes.

7/11/2018 Sole surviving brussel sprouts that I fawned over for a good year and a half - even though they only produced a handful of sprouts.

7/11/2018 The buttercrunch lettuce - far and away the most surprising survivor of my terrible planting and tending. It must have been a mutant.

2/3/2019 The calm before the storm. The storm of gardening that is.

It really wasn’t until 2019 that we got our poop in a scoop and really started contemplating what this garden could really be.

In 2019 I got my bistro table and chairs, I got my tea in the garden, and I got my life together. The garden filled up with roses, and we made the time to enjoy the beauty together. I started to wonder just how big we could make this little flower garden…

Jess ordered over 450 dahlia bulbs that november, so we were about to find out.

Enter: 2020

The year the world closed down and we turned inward. 2020 was the year the tea garden exploded, in the very best way.

3/29/2020 I started digging up and relocating to the tea garden any bulbs or patches of garden that friends wanted to part with.

3/29/2020 Jess started building custom trellises and welding elaborate supports and cages for the dozens and dozens of fall plantings that would inevitably come up that spring.

Then we sat back and waited for spring to come.

And when it did, we were ready for it.

And by “we” I really mean Jess. The amount of earth, gravel, and plant matter this man moved in one summer makes me tired just thinking about it.

In order to make sure the pathway down the center of the tea garden would remain weed-free, Jess dug down three feet and turned the top layer of soil over into hole in front of him for the entire 25 foot length of the pathway.

I have to hand it to him, between this, the weed barrier, and the gravel, it’s the cleanest most solid portion of landscaping on our entire property and the joy I get from walking down the path into the garden on a sunny day to eat under the sky or sip tea while I commune with the flowers is unmeasurable.

Jess gave me the very important job of sorting and labeling bulbs and stakes, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Jess wasted no time laying the groundwork for his masterpiece. Hours and hours and hours were spent removing grass, shifting existing plants, and amending the soil.

We even called in reinforcements to get everything into the ground.

Seeing Jess work alongside his parents, who had first introduced him to gardening as a child through their family flower business, was one of the most cup-filling experience this summer had to offer. The free labor was nothing to shake a stick at either, but I think they had fun too.

Then came the gravel - a literal truckload of gravel - and the little tea garden started to look like a very big, very fancy tea garden.

5/26/2020 The gravel we used was 5/8ths minus, highly recommend

5/26/2020 This is the stonework that will eventually be overtop all the graveled areas in the tea garden. For now it is our end-of-the-path-inspiration portion.

5/26/2020 Five hundred wheelbarrows later…

Since we do freeze in our zone 8 climate, we didn’t spring for fancy (read: expensive) reinforced terracotta pots right away. We found these at a local home depot and Jess potted them up with spring and summer blooming flowers and bulbs, and we plan to have a winter version to swap them out with eventually. So far they are holding up magnificently!

7/8/2020 I helped unbolt the section of feeder we didn’t need, and felt Very Professional about it

7/8/2020 The only way I can safely watch him weld - through the camera screen

To anchor the entrance to the tea garden we took one of the well-broken cattle feeders our neighbor traded us, removed the section we didn’t need, and then sunk it into the ground at the beginning of the path.

7/8/2020 The view from our front door. I couldn’t be more in love with it, and I also can’t wait to inevitably love it even more when we make a real path connecting the house to the tea garden.

It’s Gardeners in the Mist over here when everything is in full bloom. Some clumps of dahlias grew so high that Jess could hide in them completely, while standing straight up, wearing a sun hat - and this is just “year one”!

Here are some gratuitous 2020 garden pictures to showcase just how transformative Jess’s work was to this patch of grass and dirt. We have plans to expand it even further, romanticize it even more, and add choice winter showcasing elements down the road but for now we’re still basking in the glory of the first year blooms - even in mid winter.

10/11/2020 Bittersweet - the last summer bouquet before the frost. It’s still sitting on our island counter, dried to a crisp, because neither of us want to take down the reminder of the beauty of the tea garden.

See you all in the tea garden next year.

Until then,

CHEERS FRIENDS

CHEERS FRIENDS

The Vegetable Garden - 2020