Gardens, formal and not-so

     I'm visiting San Francisco for a part-vacation, part-work trip. The first week is all vacation, visiting my brother's family and doing a bit of sightseeing. I used the excellent-but-slightly confusing public transportation system to get there - so far, I've encountered one subway system, two light rail systems, and one bus system. It took me a half an hour to find the right bus stop. Three times I saw the bus I wanted pass me by, but I couldn't figure out how to get on it. Luckily, that bus ran every seven minutes, so once I found the stop, I didn't have to wait long.
      I decided to spend my first day in Golden Gate Park, which is San Francisco's answer to New York City's Central Park. (It's a bit bigger than Central Park, actually, which is exactly what I'd expect from anything on the West Coast.) It takes days to see everything in the park, so I stuck to a few gardens, including the Japanese Tea Garden and the Botanical Gardens, which were both excellent. The Botanical Gardens happened to be free on the day I visited, so that made it just a little bit better in my book.

     All this time with plants made me think about my own garden. I certainly will never had a formal garden; my taste runs much more toward cottage gardens, which are full of informal, dense plantings, and mix vegetables and flowers. Wikipedia describes this style as depending "on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure", which is a lovely turn of phrase, I think.

     My house came with small beds lining the back yard (back garden for those of you outside the U.S.). One length of the beds are just dirt, because the husband did the vegetable gardening, and one length of the beds are perennials, because the wife did the flower gardening. Next spring I plan to put in additional raised beds, for vegetables, but I'm looking forward to seeing what pops up in the perennial garden. I hope to plant a lot of my favorite flowers: roses, irises, hollyhocks, and gladioli are just a few that I'll probably add. I know there's already a lilac bush, and I transplanted the lavender from my last garden, and the rest will be surprises in the spring and summer.