Garden Plot: Garden has evolved with two decades of care

In the past 16 years, my garden has changed a lot. The people who built the house and garden had the idea of a tropical rhododendron garden, sporting palms and banana trees, mixed with some beautiful classic stone walls and columns topped with concrete spheres — presenting several oxymorons, I’d say. The banana trees were at the top of the recirculating stream that runs through the garden and stopped working about 15 years ago, never to be fixed. There were Podocarpus trees that want to be 30 feet by 30 feet planted in skinny 18-inch beds right next to the house — thankfully the roots didn’t undermine the foundation. There were pink, purple and a few buttery yellow rhododendrons infested with thrips all over the garden, and at the top of the lot the running bamboo had intermingled with the rhododendrons. Everything was bordered by boxwood hedges.

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