Four summers ago, my partner and I made our annual trip back to the home where he grew up. And like every summer before, I sat on the back stairs leading out to the yard, stared at the broad expanse of dry, cracked clay soil along the perimeter of the fence, and thought “someone should really plant something there.” But then it occurred to me, no one is going to plant anything there, his folks are too old to bother with a garden, if you want to see something growing there, you’ll have to do it yourself. So I did.

That summer, I planted four varieties of lavender, a couple of coreopsis, some hybrid echinacea, and butterfly weed, all in a row along the fence. My partner obligingly did the muscle work of breaking up the compacted clay soil, and in the process we unearthed a few treasures from his childhood: marbles, toy soldiers, bottle caps, some of his mother’s long-lost tea spoons. Inspired by that small success, we put in a couple of swamp milkweed in some open spaces between a few hosta on the other side of the yard.

I wanted to choose plants that would benefit the native wildlife in the area, and also those that were perennial so they would come back every year even if I wasn’t there to take care of them. Having lived most of my life in an apartment in New York City, my fondness for growing things had been confined to nursing a few poor houseplants starving for sunlight. I didn’t know much about gardening at the time, but had full confidence in the information gathered from rather casual google searches. As it turned out, we were just one zone too cold for the coreopsis and apparently hybrid echinacea are unreliable as perennials, none of those survived… but the lavender, the butterfly weed, and the swamp milkweed are still thriving. They were the beginning of Robinwood Garden.

In the time since then, family duty called and we packed up a rental car, our straggly houseplants nestled between every box, and moved from New York City into ye olde midwest family homestead. As I continue to work on expanding the garden, I’m realizing how much I’ve learned from both the wisdom and mistakes shared in other gardening blogs, and decided to keep track of my own adventures. If you’ve stumbled across this blog, I hope you’ll find something here that’s inspiring, amusing, enlightening, or all of the above.