Today’s photos are from Nancy Ondra.

Hayefield, my homestead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, began over 20 years ago, when I built a log cabin on a minimally managed hayfield on our family farm. I slowly created the gardens, which now fill about an acre, and let about two acres go back to meadow. The remaining acre served as pasture for my alpacas; now I’m letting most of it return to meadow too.

Over the years, the garden areas have served many purposes. They’ve been a living laboratory where I’ve worked on plant combinations and color themes and experimented with garden maintenance techniques for the books I’ve written. They’ve provided endless opportunities for garden photography as well.

This is a transition area from garden to meadow in mid-October, with fall color from Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica, Zones 5–9), Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum, Zones 3–8), and Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii, Zones 5–8).

Gradually, my interest shifted from acquiring the latest trademarked cultivars to enjoying the genetic diversity of seed-grown plants. I’ve been participating in seed exchanges since I started gardening nearly 40 years ago, and about a decade ago I started selling seeds from my gardens and meadows online.

This is the aptly named seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia, Zones 4–8), an eastern North American native with distinctive cubic seed capsules.

I’m trying very hard not to create new garden areas, so each year I’ve been converting existing beds and borders into seed evaluation and production areas, replacing many of the cultivars with seedlings from my germination experiments and trying out new-to-me seeds of uncommon species, heirloom varieties, and horticultural oddities.

Instead of putting plants together to create beautiful combinations, I now puzzle out how to keep them far enough apart to prevent the various seed strains from crossing. Most of the gardens still look garden-y, but that’s more by luck than by design.

While I still drool over the latest perennial introductions and enjoy planning interesting combinations on paper, the yearly cycle of sowing, growing, and collecting seeds is so absorbing that I don’t much miss having a nicely designed “show” garden. There’s still plenty of space left for new projects, and there may be more changes in the future—I’ve long been tempted to try my hand at growing cut flowers, for example—so I’m sure I’ll never be bored!

If you want to learn more about Nancy and her beautiful garden, check out her website.

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