About
About my garden
I’ve been online creating garden webpages since 1998 and gardening since forever
(creating my own gardens since 1974)
As someone who enjoys knowing the person behind the website, and, especially, who makes the garden, it seemed worthwhile to have yet another facet of my history- this time in the garden. 
I have always balanced the needs of small children with garden dream plans. I try to keep poisonous, but beautiful, plants (such as Aconitum Napellus) out of the garden; and a pool, when children were under five, was always more of a worry than it was worth. Time does march on, though, and I have a water garden now, of humble dimensions.
Quicklinks
My love of the garden stems back to my early childhood,
And one might suppose further than that if the genes have anything to do with it! My maternal grandfather was a grand gardener; as many clergy often are. He did not have much ground around his small parsonage, but it was fully utilized within it’s boundaries in a richly compost laden vegetable garden with beautiful old fashioned roses rimming the tiny house. Yes, I well remember hot summer evenings with the job of picking off the horrid little Japanese beetles and putting them in a jar of kerosene. The deep imprint of the smell and look of the vegetable garden soil, which I helped enrich by digging in the coffee grounds and vegetable peelings, is clear and vivid in my mind as any of Proust’s memories.
My paternal grandmother raised beautiful florist flowers of iris and peonies, but it was my mothers garden that gave me most of my experiences. To this day she far outshines me in the production of quality vegetables and the abundance of self started roses. She has a cottage gardens medley of blossoms throughout her city garden which she alone cares for. Certain plants in the garden of my early years are outstanding in memory: crocus lining the walkway, Spirea ‘Anthony Waterer‘ with their tiny fur fluff of purple flowers, the “strawberry shrub” with its clove-shaped, scented flowers, fruit laden raspberries on the fence, and a magnificent stand of purple Siberian irises. Of course, there were so many other things, and many still influence my garden choices today. I suppose I am a somewhat nostalgic person.
I did not begin my own garden until much later when my husband and I purchased our own house, although I had a small garden plot in each of our rented houses before that. They consisted of a small square of ground for tomatoes, lettuce, and parsley, and some room for Zinnias and marigolds. Wherever I have lived, I left crocus, daffodil, and tulip bulbs behind me.
It was my previous, “the city” garden that saw my development as a gardener. I had great success with it and cultivated every inch. It had started with a huge sweet cherry in the back and the remnants of someones effort (maybe in the fifties) to create a white garden. In a 4×2 foot space an Annabelle hydrangea, white climbing rose, white peony were planted. White spireas were along the shady side of the house, and scruffy grass covered the remains. That was what I started gardening with: a clay soil over shale which is common in Central Ohio. At that home, the front entrance consisted of a mixed dooryard garden of evergreen and deciduous plants at the foundation of the house, an enclosure of a picket fence with bushes at the corners, a honey locust planted towards the street and a small rock garden of imported Lake Erie limestone rocks, the kind with all the interesting fissures and holes, surrounded with all sorts of miniature plantings and backed with a small holly. The backyard held a winding walk with a vegetable garden and play yard to the left and a grassy area surrounded by the perennial beds. The back deck fronted with a raised bed and shaded with a Bradford pear faced a garage disguised with lush Boston ivy. That garden is fairly gone now, since one does not chose the habits of the gardens next owners.
The size of a city garden was ideal for a beginner, I was able to organically improve the soil with gypsum, peat moss, packaged cow manure, and a meager compost bin. My country garden would laugh at such minuscule amounts! I did work out a system I still use of adding shovelfuls of compost to each planting hole when putting in new plants. Compost for me is a simple affair. An above ground holding area for plant and grass clippings, vegetable refuse from the kitchen, some of autumns leaves, and the carcasses of less noxious weeds. I describe my present garden in the garden pages of my journal. Stayed tuned for the developments!
New articles and the more important updates have a home on the What’s New? page
This country garden has ‘Kokomo soil‘ which is a dark gray clay loam. It was once part of the tall grass prairie, a taste of what was too come for pioneers moving out West. They say the grasses and forbs which make up this prairie stood as high as a man on horseback, but there are few bits of the original landscape left now. As far as the eye can see a flat landscape stretches to the sunset, planted with wheat, corn, and soybeans, mainly; dotted on briefly with trees and farm houses, their old barns decaying into the sightline or replaced with new metal machinery “garages”. It has been a challenge to garden here, despite the good soil. Strong winds,wet springs, and dry late summers made the former land late to be cultivated ( it was an Indian hunting ground, and then became grazing pastures) and still prove challenging for flower gardens. And now, with maturity, my reduced energies give way to a more tolerant mellowness. My ambitions are more about how to reduce the workload, than what new and rare planting I might conjure up!
Still, I am an ambitious gardener, far outstripping my abilities and finances when planning. Always optimistic for the NEXT season…this is a trait amongst gardeners; maybe that is why we congregate …we know our peculiarities and even revel in them!
About the page
Originally “Ilona’s Garden” was part of my “Ilona’s Reflecting Pool” site on geocities. It started out with the idea that I would write a small section on gardening experience; but it grew as more and more pages were added, until it became the largest part of the site. It was time to move to its own domain.
As the pages, and my garden, have matured ( along with me!) they have come to the point where major changes need to be made. I retained the html pages that I have written, but Word Press handles most of the site.
I have seen lots of changes in the internet garden scene, most of them have been improvements in site design and serving up lots of great gardening tips for just about any garden situation. As the daunting task of writing about gardening has dawned on me I have reduced my scope to what I know: Central Ohio Gardening. Hope you enjoy the pages and the growth of this new part of my garden site. Please bookmark me! Press Ctrl + D
I started an experiment in garden journaling on blogger when blogging was fairly new, around March of 2004. It’s grown so much I have found it hard to keep up! But there are many posts on all sorts of garden topics @ Ilona’s Garden Journal, so please search with the search box for what you are interested in…. there are close to 500 posts as I write this in 2008.
If you wish to help support my site please check into the opportunities in the affiliate programs or purchase your books on Amazon through the GardenShop page or the search widget, or maybe buy me a coffee. Thank you so much for considering this 
For many years I put untold hours of work into the pages just for the love of giving free information and advice. But as I branched out and now have a domain and paid hosting I could use some support to continue. If, however, you don’t wish to support in a financial way I would love it if you bookmarked the site ( just use the handy bookmarking gizmo below), and if you have your own blog or website, if you would kindly link to me. that would just as appreciated!
