Aspen Grove – The Garden That Started It All

GardenMyths.com started 3 years ago (September 2012), and to date I’ve had about 600,000 visitors, with 75% of those coming this year. Thank you to everyone who frequents this blog.

This post will be different than my normal post. Today, I’d like to show you my garden, Aspen Grove, as well as announce some new initiatives that have been started – Garden Myths has a baby brother and sister!

Aspen Grove – The Garden That Started It All

The quest for truth in gardening started many years ago with my first garden. I still remember reading about people like Ruth Stout, who, believe it or not – never dug in their garden. How strange! When every other gardening book (long before the internet) told me to double dig, this lady told me not to dig.

I did double dig my first garden. I now know how stupid that was.

This experience taught me a valuable lesson. Don’t believe everything you read. I’ve had numerous hobbies; collected cactus, bred tropical fish, and had a collection of over 1,000 orchids. In all those hobbies, I found that a good amount of the published information from “experts” was wrong.

I’ve always had a garden, but 10 years ago my wife and I decided it was time to move to a bigger garden. We bought a place with a house and 6 acres (3 hectares ) of mostly undeveloped land. The previous owners had no garden, unless you count 6 yews, two hostas and a couple of tulips.

I started to build what would become the largest private garden in a town of 120,000 people. I called it Aspen Grove since I have one of the towns largest clumps of aspen trees. These trees are not very common this far south.

Over many years I learned a lot about gardening, garden design and I became intimate with a wide variety of plants. I am a plant-a-holic and when people ask me to name my favorite plant, the answer is easy. It is the one I don’t have yet.

Several of you have asked to see more of my garden and I plan to do just that. The problem is that I don’t want to change the focus of this blog – it should not become a blog about myself or my garden. This one post is an exception. So I have decided to start two new initiatives.

Garden Fundamentals Blog

I’ve started a new blog called Garden Fundamentals which will focus on general gardening topics. It will feature my favorite plants, discuss ideas for garden design, and review basic gardening techniques. It will allow me to talk about interesting things that are not myths. It will also allow me to make the courses and lectures I present locally, available to a wider audience.

The Garden Fundamentals blog has been up and running for a few months and now has several informative posts, including Spring Bulbs – Buying and Planting, and Fertilizer – Understanding Plant Nutrients.

If you want to get regular updates from this new blog you will have to subscribe to it separately.

Garden Fundamentals YouTube Channel

I also want to start making videos about gardening and so I have started a YouTube channel, called Garden Fundamentals, to store and promote my gardening videos. That’s right – I may be getting older, but I am now a “YouTuber”. Ok, that may be a myth – I only have one video so far but there are plans for many more.

The topics for these videos will follow along the lines of the Garden Fundamentals blog; general garden and garden design information. It will also feature my garden on a regular basis.

So here is my first video. I hope you enjoy Aspen Grove Gardens. If you like what you see, please subscribe to my channel and you will be notified of future videos.