When is a garden not a Garden

I'm not a great gardener. In fact I'm pretty lazy when it comes to gardening. But I love looking at peoples gardens and I wish I had one.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. We have plants around the house and mostly they aren't weeds. But there is, I believe, a point where a collection of plants becomes a garden. The Oxford Dictionary seems rather generous to me when it defines a garden as "a piece of ground adjoining a private residence used for growing flowers etc". Perhaps I should be making a distinction between a garden and a Garden (a distinction that the Oxford is unwilling to make). Perhaps I already have a garden and what I wish I had is a Garden.

The purpose of this blog is to chart the transformation of my garden into a Garden. The process began a few months ago in October, 2006. At that time I thought about a garden blog. But I wasn't really sure about blogging and I held off. Blogging takes committment in the same way that having a Garden takes committment. Like a garden a blog requires regular attention. An empty archive acting as a call to action in the same way as an over grown garden does. Perhaps it can work both ways. A neglected blog may encourage gardening and a neglected garden may encourage blogging. I guess we'll.

I want to warn you in advance; I plan to do some retrospective blogging. I want a full account of the work already done.