Inspiration can come from different places. Reading, talking with friends, taking a class, a new experience. There are also opportunities like daydreaming and meditation.

Photographs work best for me. When I see something I like in a book, magazine or newspaper, I save it. I've cut photos from myriad publications and made color copies from book pages. I've even asked permission to cut while in waiting rooms—whether doctor, dentist or veterinarian—if there's one particular photo I have to have.

This method has proved successful. Designing and building our house was made far simpler because, for many years, I had been saving photos of my dream kitchen, the ultimate dog/laundry room and even cool light fixtures and cabinet hardware. When our builder and his contractors had a question, I simply whipped out a photo and they knew exactly what I envisioned. The result? Our house is, quite literally, a dream come true.

Dream herb garden.
While sorting through file folders last winter, I discovered a photograph I had saved of an herb garden in a rustic cedar window box. It was lush with herbs and colorful with bright annuals. There was even a cute cherry tomato plant. I could do this!

So this spring, I hauled out my big, long window box and placed it on our south-facing deck. I filled it with good soil and planted plenty of herbs—thyme, rosemary, tarragon, basil, dill, sage, Italian parsley, chives and lemon verbena. I also placed two 'Whirlybird' nasturtiums to tumble over the edge of the box (and to eat) and a diminutive Nemesia fruticans with fragrant pink flowers. Unfortunately, I couldn't fit in the cute cherry tomato.

Not much happened for several weeks...and I fretted. This wasn't my vision at all. Just lately, though, temperatures warmed and rains abated and my herb garden burgeoned.

Another dream came true.

Not everything works.
Nothing is as refreshing as a gardener admitting, "That's a weed" or "I killed it..." Even the greatest of gardeners screws up from time to time. It's nothing to be ashamed of—it's just gardening.
~ Steve Aitken, Fine Gardening Editor

The backdrop to the herb garden is a large cedar trellis that was built last fall. My dream for this project has been a disaster. Again, I had photographs—lush vines of complementary colors all happily twining together. I'd choose several clematis cultivars and plant a longtime favorite—porcelain berry vine (Ampelopsis brevipendunculata 'Elegans').

A 'Henryii' clematis died soon after planting (a victim of the reviled clematis wilt?). Another clematis cultivar, this one a gorgeous 'Princess Diana' texensis with rose-colored, bell-shaped blossoms, was cut off at the ground (by some critter?). The sapphire blue blossoms of 'Rhapsody' clematis were beautiful but the plant itself is barely hanging in there.

Thankfully, two tough vines, sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata or C. terniflora) and porcelain berry vine, are thriving.

This also appears in the Askov American, Askov, Minnesota.