Thank you that is the effect I aim for. It has taken quite some time because I also aim to just let the plants get on with it, but they get there in the end.

This is a different variety than the one most know. I only discovered it several years ago. Does this variety change color depending on the acidity/alkalinity of the soil?

@JackPedigo The blossoms on mine have never taken color; I don't believe they do.

@tinkercreek Interesting, are there any of these varieties that have color or are they all white?

No problem. I have been working on it twenty five years, and it was an empty field when I started. Some of the trees were pot grown by me before moving here, so they were quite large when planted. There is a water course runs down the side, so that it was possible to tap into that to create the natural pond, which is the main feature, though not shown.

@Fernapple May I ask how you came to that space and had you made a garden elsewhere before this one? Also did you have a long interest in gardens? I know garden people who were hooked at a young age but not me. I actually had a negative take on gardens as fussy, regimented, symmetrical affairs while I much more loved wild feeling spaces. Your has the vibe I like, a place where you can feel in touch with nature rather than be reminded of man’s conquest of it.

@MarkWD I too grew up with a greater love of nature than gardens. In fact we lived in the country and I practically spent my childhood running wild in the woods. My family were in horticulture and farming, but I decided to go in for gardening and design, in part because it was a job which kept me close to nature. But I grew fed up with the preasure and the traveling involved in garden making for other people, so I decided to start a plant nursery as a side line, hopefully to provide an additional income, so that I could cherry pick my jobs for other people.

The house and garden were chosen for that reason, being a very small bungalow in a large plot with a water supply. However the nursery was very successful, and when my wife died I felt the need for a change of direction, so I gave up the garden business altogether and made the nursery my only job, though with a display garden on the side. The garden is of course a natural wildlife garden, but it is extremely popular with the visitors, and now as I move into retirement, and following the death of my father and only employee, it is perhaps going to change again, becoming an open garden with a small nursery rather than a large full time nursery with a garden. Will send you something private by message.

@Fernapple Sorry to hear you lost your wife but the realization has been hitting home that one or the other of us will most likely complete the life cycle before the other. Most likely I'll be the one left hanging but on the bright side she won't. If you were in my neck of the woods I'd be strolling your show gardens and looking for inspiration in the nursery regularly. I have a few friends with nurseries who I do that with now.

One of them, Annie, and I have a long history. She worked at the larger nursery near where I taught when I first started but she went from growing plants for the nursery in her backyard to progressively larger operations. In addition her only son was my pupil for maths in his 8th grade year. I got to know her better when I had to move a plant I'd bought at a botanical garden, Lobelia aguana [1st photo]. It took a year or so to sort itself after the move and so I went back to the bot garden to see if I could purchase another plant, only to learn it had died out there entirely. So when my old plant perked up and started flowering again I brought seed back to the bot garden and to Annie's. The bot garden never used them as far as I could tell, but Annie's is still producing it and acknowledges me for the seed gift in her write up at the nursery. At our annual garden/studio party last year she came and recognized many plants as having come from her, including the mother Lobelia plant. I managed to get the photo below of her with a couple of our mutual garden designer friends. Come to find out the house we'd always heard had burned down in our side yard beside the creek on our northern border, was one she was living in at the time. Fortunately they were out at the time. She seemed pleased to reminisce but I know the neighborhood was a lot rougher then before the Santa Fe railway was taken out behind us, as shown in the last photo. Oh, and this is the url to Annie's write up of the Lobelia: [anniesannuals.com]

@MarkWD I love Annies site it is really informative. And a great insight into gardening in another land. I am sorry she had to trade in a rough area, I have been lucky that way, just a quiet village. I will read more when I get the time, have to go now.

Sounds like we need some more photos posted here.