The Island Bed
I will sheepishly admit that I don't remember what year my family and I moved into this house, but I'll guess it has been close to 25 years since we migrated here from the house next door. The island bed in my back garden was a lawn and the neighbors behind me to the west had a solid row of trees along the fence -birch, Japanese maples and 2 miserable Leylandi cypress, along with the damn Ash tree which still lives on. There was a lot of shade. Birch, cypress and maples are all long gone, and as of this spring so is my 30+ year old Liquidambar. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to get rid of that hellacious tree. It brought glorious sun into areas of my garden that had been subject to chronic flopping and stretching for years -much to the irritation of this gardener. I started digging out lawn for what I now call the Island Bed just a few years after we moved in, once my children had moved on from grass-romping, and have been slowly expanding it ever since. The l