How to Recreate Famous Gardens in Your Backyard

As you have traveled or are planning to travel you probably have encountered some beautiful gardens. Don't you wish you could pick up the entire garden and transplant it into your own? There are ways of doing this by photos, genealogy and history. How, you ask? The way I have been doing this for years, visiting gardens, taking pictures, recording names of plants, buy seed from where I visit, and researching native plants of my own area.

By creating a garden you can create the past. It's like you are stepping back in time, visiting you great grandmothers garden or the memories you had as a child.

Visiting gardens as you travel you can get ideas on garden styles and the type of plants that grow well in that part of the country. By taking pictures you are able to look back on the style that you loved with out trying to rack your brain on how it was mapped out.

You can take bits and pieces of different gardens that can help you become inspired for your own garden. You don't have to recreate the entire garden that you loved so much because it might not fit well with your house, property size or your climate you live in. You have to broaden your plant vocabulary because some plants you have seen and want might not grow well for you. You have to go with the closets plant variety that is for your climate in order for it to survive, if that particular plant won't work at all.

There are ways of recapturing that garden you visited at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home by substitution, this can usually imitate the appearance that you so loved. You have to do your research on the particular plant that you want plus you can talk to a local gardening center. They do have gardening specialists that can help you find a compatible plant if the one you want won't grow in your garden because of your climate zone. Tell the specialist what you would like to see and the specialist will help you get as close as possible to the real thing.

You have to also realize that your garden size is just not as quite as big as the garden at Monticello so you will have to scale it down some. The plants that you would like to have just won't do because of there size so you have to use smaller plants. Smaller plants can do the trick of a beautiful garden; just think of it as a miniature version of the real thing.
You can't bring home the exact look of Thomas Jefferson's fruit tree orchard but you can probably plant one or two, even if you can't your garden specialist can come up with something that will be similar.

I'm sure plants aren't the only things you want to recreate, how about that statue in the garden at Belmont. You can't get the exact statue but you can get something similar at the garden center. It will add the same ambience that you experienced and want for your garden.

Gardens aren't just for beauty they can have special meaning also. Remember that favorite flower your grandmother just loved or that flowering tree your mother just had to have so dad planted it. Bringing back these past experiences is like bringing back life to your family. My great great grandmother just loved Peonies so I planted them all a long my back fence and every May when they bloomed I would remember her. Remembering brings a soft spot to your heart. Besides plants that make you remember, you can also add heirloom items to your garden. My mother has a black cast iron kettle that was brought with my ancestors by covered wagon from state to state. Now she has had it for years and always plants flowers in it.

Another way of bringing remembrance to your garden is to research where your ancestors lived and what they would have grown in that particular area. A lot would have been native plants for that region and may have also been helpful for there survival.

There is no end to designing a garden. If you have traveled to the country that your ancestor came from you might want a particular plant from there to remind you of your adventures and family. Garden accents from a particular country will also bring back memories.

If you would like just a simple garden how about just using all native plants, plants that just grow wild in your neck of the woods. They are also very hardy and after they are established you can just let them go but do set boundaries or they will take over your entire yard.

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