Or view the slideshow . In 1999 we started this garden from seedlings, volunteer plants, and plants rescued from a garden that was to become lawn. These pages are a look at this small garden in its second summer. Often the ground is without snow cover. Winter is hard on plants.
Summers have plenty of daylight but have many cool and overcast days.
We've been in a dryer than normal period the last eight or ten years, so on top of this, the ground may be dry. This northern garden location requires hardy plants. The ground is still frozen down about 18 inches on May 19th. The Fairy Slipper orchid , which grows on a long-ago rotted log beneath some old birch trees, started blooming on May 17 in 2001. We have two clumps that have both grown larger in the three years since we transplanted them.