by Judith Windover

Created on: May 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

My mother is legally blind. She has no peripheral vision, only tunnel vision, and one glass eye. During the seasons in which she created her garden she developed a cataract and became color blind. Last winter the cataract was removed enabling my mother to see the enormous beauty she created through her passionate love affair with her garden and life. This is her story.

Humble Beginnings

My garden has developed over the past ten years and is still not finished. It will never be finished. It will continue to grow and change as long as I do. It began as a thirty by forty foot back yard with nothing but grass and a couple neglected shrubs. But I had a vision. In my mind I could picture a beautiful garden and I set out to make it a reality. Some might say that it was an impossible pie-in-the-sky dream. But I've always been a dreamer, and when I dream, I dream big.

Making a garden, for me, was not an easy task. I had neither the knowledge nor the money to make it happen. I wasn't able to hire a landscape architect or bring in any heavy equipment. what I did have was willpower, determination, and a dream, plus, I must confess, some free labor donated by my children. I began to collect information from books, magazines and television gardening shows. I came to realize that the style of garden that most appealed to me was based roughly on the English cottage style. I wanted a jumble of plants that bloomed at various times of the year and returned to bloom again the following year. My love affair with perennials began. I was hooked on them and began to learn everything that I could about them. I had no interest whatsoever in annuals that bloomed continuously all summer. That, to me, was boring. I wanted the challenge of finding plants that would provide me with a changing palette of color throughout the year.

My first small garden was at the back of the house where the deck now stands. It consisted of a few plants and bulbs. But when I first put a shovel in the ground and witnessed the beauty that emerged, I realized that what I thought might be a small hobby, would evolve into a consuming and passionate love affair.

When my son built the deck the following year, I had to rescue the plants and make a place for them to grow. This was the beginning of the large garden that now takes up most of my back yard. This was also the beginning of an obsession that has taken over my life.

Beds were laid out with the help of a garden hose. With the aid of a shovel and a wheelbarrow sod

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