My Studio Garden

Mountain Woman Studio Garden

Until I moved to Oklahoma City, I seldom spent much time outdoors. In the south, there are too many creepy-crawlies and mosquitoes, and it is very humid. The same goes for Tennessee. In Colorado, the summers seemed tooooo short to waste digging in the ground.

However, in Oklahoma, I became interested in creating a garden in which to sit, to paint, and to photograph wonderful growing things. In 2001, my husband and I bought a duplex. We live in one side and one side is a studio. Both sides had been rented for many years and the yards were severely neglected and contained little grass and a lot of weeds.

I decided to take over the studio back yard and turn it into a garden. I set up a multi-year plan. The first year, I excavated the 8′ x 24″ out from my patio going down a foot deep and filling it with new soil. I planted a small bed and let the grass grow. The next year, I laid a flagstone pathway and planted beds along each side.

Yard off patio

Path before Flagstones

Flagstone Pathway

Each year, I have added to the studio garden–new structures, new plants, new decorations. The following are photos of the changes through the years.

In 2006, I had a scraggly, 75 foot tall oak tree cut down leaving an 18″ stump. I thought I might place a sculpture on it. Here are pictures of its transformation.