© Joan Currie

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.
Joseph Joubert

My father’s garden is a lovely mix of annual and perennial flowers. I have always favored perennials mostly because of the way they change the look of the garden season by season: the clusters of white snowdrops, yellow daffodils and red tulips in the spring; the purple irises, lavender, and Johnson’s Blue geraniums in early summer; the pink tea roses and peonies in middle summer; and golden Black-eyed Susans by late summer. I like the constancy of the plants blooming year after year at the same time, in the same way when everything else in my environment is changing so rapidly.