Tiny, wonderful Va-Hi garden with pink pigs

Every arrival here should produce a smile.

I never paid attention until they lit the pigs for Christmas. The teen-aged infill townhouses are background buildings compared to their eclectic neighbors. I never paid much attention to them.

Then I met I met Halo and Wings, dressed for Christmas.

They are living between the townhouses...


in a tiny oasis ignored by passersby. Wall, gravel, bench, spillover ground-cover.


A delicate arched gate, terracotta pavers, urns, pansies, wall climbing vines that encroach on the stairs. Pots up and down, a sunny place to sit, a shaded chair on the stoop, textures galore.


This doesn't require acres or million$. I wish landscape designers featured attainable little patches like this.

Even a tiny city lot can have a 172. GARDEN GROWING WILD. From A Pattern Language:

"The gardener is in the position of a good doctor, watching nature take its course, occasionally taking action, pruning, pulling out some species, only to give the garden more room to grow and become itself. By contrast, the gardens that have to be tended obsessively, enslave a person to them; you cannot learn from them in quite the same way."

Did I mention this eclectic street?