Gardening Dilema

I can't remember if I mentioned, I've gotten into gardening. Last summer I inherited taking over the gardens after my neighbors moved out and really enjoyed tending to the plants and being out in nature. Well really, I spend my time weeding, trimming dead branches, weeding and more weeding. It's a little tricky as I don't know what the names are and the previous Gardner doesn't always know the names either, she just liked the plant regardless of if it was a weed or not (or invasive). Last year, I specifically limited myself to getting to know the gardens and the plants and no planning or purchases. But there are some gaps in the garden beds and there are some areas that invasive "weeds" are beating me at my weeding game (actually I figured out if you don't weed right you end up helping the weed multiple even faster - opps). 

Over the winter I casually looked at gardening stuff and frankly it's overwhelming - so many plants and hard to know what works with what and if it will do well in my garden beds. And things added up $$ quickly. I kept coming back to the idea of trying to pick out native, non-invasive plants. But again this was challenging because I could read a ton about them but then trying to match up what was being sold at nurseries, what they looked like when they bloomed, and where to plant them were a lot of variables. I forget how I got to my answer, probably late night surfing, I stumbled upon the middlesex conservation district website. Not a ton of info, but the timing was perfect - they have a spring plant sale to raise money for their non-profit  programs and they needed volunteers. And the best part, they paid you for your time with plants!  A great way to experiment in my next phase of gardening without "wasting" money on plants that might die while I'm in my trial and error phase. My plan is to pick up plants without spending a dime. I just finished a day of packaging up seedlings and bulbs and a ton of prep work. And tomorrow I'm helping out again with packaging up the pre-orders. 

And tonight, I brought home the plant list and I am looking up each item online to see what they will look like, how hardy they are (no delicate plants for me) and trying to figure out what to bring home. I just went through and rated each plant - love it, cool to try out, and maybe next time. Unfortunately there are a lot of love its so I'm taking a break before I go back and finalize my list. There are shrubs and trees and groundcovers, and perennials. What to pick?  Oh, and chatting with the other volunteers, a bunch commented that there were a lot of native plants that were hard to find at nurseries and the prices were really good. 

Right now, I'm like, that looks delicious and that looks delicious, but not really thinking what the overall menu should be and what compliments what. And frankly I kind of forgot what I already have to work with already established in my garden beds. I started taking pictures in the late summer to document the different blooms. Oh right, that's yet another variable to deal with, planting a variety of plants so you have things blooming all summer. So I'm already accepting the fact that in the next several years I'll be spending time moving things around and replanting things.  Which frankly is what I do inside my house, rearrange furniture until I get a configuration I really like. Well, it's getting late, and I have my homework to do!