Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

...the more a man loves his garden, the more he delights in constantly changing the arrangements...though I have many trees, shrubs, and other plants that have been in their present places for many years, there is not a single path or flower-bed that is the same now as it was thirty or even twenty years ago...

Canon Henry Ellacombe
In a Gloucestershire Garden (1896)

Twenty or thirty years? I've lived here for not quite three years and only a handful of my plants are still where I initially planted them. Doubtless this is a symptom of yet one more personality disorder under which I suffer, but it seems against my nature to plant something and leave it there.

I'm not talking about moving a sun-loving plant because a tree has grown so tall that the plant in question is now in full shade. I will buy a plant, set the pot in the space where I think it should go, and then leave it there for a few days to be sure I like the location before I actually dig the hole.

Then, two weeks later, it becomes clear that the placement of the plant is most unsatisfactory, and it must be moved without delay.

This fall, I started a Winter Garden, consisting of numerous evergreens, including three Wax Myrtles planted near the back of the bed. A month later, I bought a Nellie Stevens holly and found to my dismay that one of the Wax Myrtles was growing precisely where the holly needed to be, so there was nothing to do but dig it up and move it.

Some of my plants are living in their fourth location in three years. I just know they hate to see me carrying a shovel in their direction.

I resolve not to move another thing this year. This year being 2007, of course.