The Top Ten Garden was created as a place to share all my favorite gardening tips. From planting my favorite annuals (zinnias & sunflowers are always on the list!) to growing herbs for the kitchen and setting up a garden fence to keep the dog out of my garden beds.
I have always enjoyed creating things. Whether it was making my own candles, building a dresser from scratch or growing plants. The notion that I can take an idea, give it some thought, do some planning and then make that idea come to life is something that excites me probably more than anything.
I think the part I like the best is figuring things out. Trying different ideas until I end up with the result I am looking for. Sometimes I love the outcome, other times it is a complete goof. But either way, I still have fun during the process and am happier for having gone through the process.
My obsession with gardening came to me a little later in life – when I bought my first house. The landscaping was OK but pretty boring. And I was so busy with the house, I had simply forgotten about it. The last five years or so had been all about college life, then moving across the country and getting my first real job, then came my first house. I am sure many people can relate, we get so busy with life, that we forget about our passions. It wasn’t until my family came out to visit me and my Mother said – Sherri, where are the flowers?
It was then that I remembered how much fun I had growing up helping my mom with the gardening. That’s when it all really started. The first year I planted the borders, foundational perenials plus a few fun experiments like a wild flower corner grown from seed.
The second year, I hired a landscaper to remove the stones in my side walk way and add a few new garden beds. And every year I added a little more. A huge raised garden bed became my place to grow annuals. I started experimenting with growing my own flowers from seed the next year – a tray of zinnia on the kitchen table. Boy were they leggy! I made lots of made mistakes, but that’s part of the fun.
I joined a local garden group and started trading plants with other gardeners in the area. We did a seedling swap every year which really sparked my love for growing plants from seed. I quickly ran out of room for everything I wanted to grow. By the third year in that house, I had a full light setup system setup in the garage so I could grow dozens of new flower varieties. You might say I became a little obsessed.
This website brings together two of my passions – growing plants and building websites. Both allow me to take a little seed or idea, plant it then watch it grow into something beautiful. At least that is my hope for the Top Ten Garden website. 🙂 It’s just a baby now, but I hope to watch it grow into something amazing. I chose the format of a top ten list, since they are an easy way to spark new ideas and get me thinking about different plants to grow or new techniques to try. On the Top Ten Garden, I write about all my favorite gardening topics. Some are ideas I’ve tried & others are ones I’d like to. And while it might not always be exactly ten in the list…you get the basic idea.
And now the fun part begins. I hope you’ll join me on my journey & feel free to suggest new topics you’d like to see us cover. Just drop me a line on the Contact Us page!