Download May 2026 HortusScope
Handwriting’s on the wall: We’re going to need to move to what my friend Leanne calls an “old folks storage facility.” That means persuading someone to buy our house and, with it, thirty years’ worth of gardening experiments and investments.
I have this season to make the landscape presentable and not too scary for the next homeowner. How to proceed? For one thing, I know everything needs to look neat—every plant in its allotted space and not running over its neighbors. I know, or at least hope, we can camouflage all the garden maintenance involved by precisely edging all the beds—lawn on one side, plants on the other.
But will prospective buyers respect my mission to use native plants in a designed landscape? Many plants will be unfamiliar and thus unloved. How can I keep the future buyers from bulldozing everything and turning it back into turf grass, as happened with my last garden thirty years ago.
Stay tuned, and if you care to share any advice, I would welcome it! Oh, and the photo is of Clematis ‘Guernsey Cream,’ which I fell in love with during a visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden ages ago.
