start the garden began when we had to replace the foundation of the house probably fifteen sixteen years ago and all the plants that were tied up against the house had to go it made a new opportunity and we put this garden in not only for design but also as a berm so that the water coming off the hill no longer comes at the house it goes around the house so that's  making lemonade out of so lemon so how did it look like that time what was it it had very tight square bushes in the front and one what i call affectionately a cow plop garden in the middle of the back yard which is just one little circle in the middle of the back so with the exception of two trees on this property i've planted everything that you see everything every border every tree every except for two and there's one maple tree and one crab apple that i didn't plant do you have a plan what to do at first i had a plan and it would be a five year plan and i'd get it done in two years so i'd make another plan and get that so it involved while you were doing let's have a look ok well this is the glade and one of the things when we first arrived here is that there was no shade so these emma linker provide shade and some of the plants that are here told lilies and maidenhair fern are things that really enjoy being in the shade and as we come out from the glade this is one of my the favorite my favorite names of all plants in the garden this grass is called kalama grossed us over dams and i just love the sound right and these are mary stoker moms which in the fall will be africa colored with chartreuse centers and they'll be a complete mess so you come with me into the sacred circle and each of these rooms in my garden has ended up having a name this we have a fire pit so we can come up here on cool nights and have a fire and all of these rocks we i planted the rocks before i planted the garden because so many rocks come up from the ground here ten years that i had extra ones and the soil underneath here is such bad soils that it made ideal soil to have a rock garden so that's how this one got planted imagine sitting is a fire growing where you can see camel's hump mount mansfield and from a little further down you can see the adirondacks now we're going to head down the boulevard each of these little gardens has ended up with a kind of name and one of the things you'll notice about my garden is that i really like curves so that's included in my garden i also like texture so i plant for a variety of texture regardless of what's in bloom so that i get all different things here's a small means the structure of the leaves the leaves the variety the shapes of the leaves the color of the leaves so i will have a chartreuse plant next to a purple one but they won't it won't be about the bloom it'll be about the color and texture of the foamy edge so that the bloom becomes an added attraction but for instance here we have a weeping plant and we have a shaped mound and we have a small spike foliage even though that bloom has long since gone right right right so let's go out into the parade ground oh there you can see there's a parade grounds here this is one of the more unusual plants in my garden it's bottlebrush buckeye and it's just now coming into bloom with all of those spikes so it's in the same family as chestnut horse chestnut and then this next section is a gate and that's because this neighbor and i consider ourselves sole neighbors so we have an open garden gate between our gardens which is great fun  like an orchard it is there is an orchard in their front yard so we share you as that way so on breezy days that's one of the sounds of my garden this camperdown elma special to me because my inspiration for gardens is that my dad was a gardener and he had a camper down elm so i wanted to have a camper down elm one of my philosophies in gardening came from father because he said of plants every plant is a right just plant weeds are right just plants rooted in the wrong place and it's made it easy for me to decide when some section of flowers gets overgrown i go right just plant you're in the wrong place and out it goes whether it goes to another place in the garden or into the compost i honor that it's a righteous plant and it's gone so it's made it easy to edit my garden with that kind of philosophy because it gives a way to accept whatever happens when you do something so this is a lovely place to be able to sit quietly and be in the panorama and when i first started gardening i had no benches and i used to work until i was exhausted and now i work until i'm tired and then i just sit and i don't get up to let's go a little further down into the garden we're going to come the rest of the circle around the parade gars ground and one of the things i wanted to mention is that what we're going to go by is a plant right and my father who had all sorts of interesting facts noted that the lee actress plant is one of the few plants in the world that blooms from the top down almost everything else and i have another interesting thing over here and that is that whenever i'm going to have a garden party or an occasion and i first learned this from a neighbor who is daughter wanted peonies at her wedding reception at the end of june that if when peonies are first in bloom in early june you wait until the buds get to feel like a marshmallow and then you cut the stems put them in a plastic bag and put them in your cris i've kept these in the crisper for six three weeks and day before yesterday i took them out put them in warm water and seven up to seven others for the sugar and they all came into full bloom and they smell just absolutely extraordinary like fresh this is the path that leads you up to the deck just off the back door all of these stones came up out of our ground yon place come and sit on our back  deck have a little refreshing lemonade for you and we can enjoy the view sometimes we are inclined to saying that pure nature is the most beautiful but i think you showed consider this my outdoor palate so it's a joy for me to share it with you