Can you grow beautiful plants in the sun? You bet you can! You just have to design it with the sun in mind. If you are like us, you have a garden that is exposed to the full sun most of the day. When we started our garden, we did not have a degree in gardening, and we made many mistakes. A few years down the road, we have figured out many answers and our garden thrives. It is a great place to spend a relaxing afternoon or enjoy an evening with friends. We have tried to document our experiences, so you can benefit from our mistakes. 

We are very liberal when it comes down to gardening: we read books and web sites, but mostly we rely on experience. We tend to figure out how to overcome limitations by using them. Over the years we have learned what works in our garden. Many flowering plants, while beautiful, simply will not grow in our garden due to limited water supply and heavy sun exposure. In those cases we simply move on and choose other varieties that adapted better to the environment.

There are different explanations of what exactly organic gardening means. Ours is a simple answer: organic gardeners don't use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides in their garden. We try to garden organically as much as possible. This means that we consider our garden as an eco system in itself and we try to work in harmony with it. Our garden consists of soil, plants, shrubs and trees including wildlife, insects and people. We use locally avaible resources where available. We enrich the soil with organic matter produced by our own garden and we regularly work compost through the soil to keep it healthy. We choose plants suited to the site.  Indigenous plants adapted to our climate and conditions are better able to grow without a lot of attention or input. It is difficult to try to grow a plant that is not right for your site, you will probably have to artificially boost its natural defenses to keep it healthy and productive.

Gardening is supposed to be a relaxing and stimulating activity, and worrying about all sorts of problems takes a lot of the fun away. Before you start your garden, think really hard about why you want to do it, and how much time you want to spend on it. Keep in mind to factor in time to just simply sit and enjoy! We certainly have when designing ours. On the other hand, after coming home from a hard days work at the office, nothing is more relaxing than spending an hour or so taking care of plants and weeding a bit. Now that we have planted our garden, we need an hour or 2 on the weekend to take care of most of the overgrowth, do some weeding and mow the lawn. On summer evenings, we simply pick up weeds and dead leaves as we walk through the garden. Nothing too strenuous or time consuming, but the result is a wonderful garden to enjoy.