According to people who track this stuff, homeowners stay put for a median six years. Half move sooner, but the other half stay longer, sometimes a lot longer.
A garden can be virtually mature in six years. At 12 years, you will have perennial beds that are long spent, shrubs that have outgrown their spaces, and an entire lot that once was sunny and now is shady.
A good makeover is not just healthy for the garden. By refreshing the plantings, the gardener grows, too.
There is no better example of this than in a venerated garden in southern England named Great Dixter. Its owner, Christopher Lloyd, 84, has worked the same beds for decades (around a house that dates to the mid-15th century) and yet is continually experimenting, altering, tweaking.
Lloyd and head gardener Fergus Garrett decided to rip out the Rose Garden, a period piece that dated to the early 20th century when Lloyd’s father, Nathaniel, laid out the gardens with the great English architect Edwin Lutyens.
The roses were suffering from replant disease, so it was reworked 10 years ago, effusively and colorfully with annuals, tender perennials and various other tropical-looking plants.
“It takes courage to rip things out, but you get that confidence after a while, after you know what could be, or should be,” Garrett said.
For small gardens, one of the biggest hurdles to keeping it fresh is finding additional ground. Peggy Bowers, a gardener at the American Horticultural Society’s River Farm in Alexandria, Va., offers this advice: “You either find space – you make new beds or get rid of all of your turf – or use containers.”
For a tour of Dixter, see the Web site at www.great dixter.co.uk.
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