Landscape Magazines

I love spending time at my parents’ house. I don’t really get along with my parents, as they are an endless source of frustration to me, but they have a yard that always makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a peaceful oasis every time I’m in it. My parents care for their yard themselves, and I have no idea how they ended up with gardens that look like they came straight out of one of those fancy landscape magazines.

My parents live on a quiet street in the middle of a big city. When you imagine yards with beautiful gardens, you’re more likely to think of a rural area nestled out in the country somewhere, because this is what you always see when you read the articles in landscape magazines. They’re always featuring country houses with tons of land and huge blooming gardens that look like they’ve never seen a second of traffic or smog. Now when I look at the pictures in the landscape magazines, I try to imagine the gardens and yards nestled in the middle of a busy city, shielded by traffic by a few well-placed bushes.

The irony of my parents’ personalities versus the beauty of their gardens never fails to amaze me. My parents are not gentle people that love the land, like what you’d imagine when you see the beauty they’ve created in their yard. They are worker bees who enjoy creating beauty as though plants are the paint and a well designed flower bed is the canvas. They go at the garden as though it is a challenge to overcome. To keep everything looking like it’s out of a picture in one of those landscape magazines. It takes a lot of work, and most of it is backbreaking and not peaceful at all. But the end result evokes such a feeling of peace that you never want to leave the garden.

They don’t write articles featuring people like my parents in landscape magazines. From reading, you would think that the only people capable of making beautiful gardens are retirees and those who appreciate the simple beauty of nature. If one of the landscape magazines were to interview my parents they may be surprised by how little they think about nature when creating their gardens. To them it is more of a science, balancing just enough light and moisture to suit the proper blends of plants they’ve chosen, and fitting it all together like a puzzle whose pieces just happen to be green and leafy.

Magazines of choice:

• Garden Ideas and Outdoor Living Magazine
  
• Garden, Deck and Landscape Magazine
  
• COUNTRY GARDENS Magazine