Our house sits on an ordinary-sized urban lot, about 110 by 60 feet, although many of our neighbours have much larger lots. And many of them chose over the years to invest in installing in-ground swimming pools in their backyards. We'd never have had the room to do the same, even if we were so inclined. A pool would have left little but 'edges' around the backyard to manoeuvre in.

My husband has always been an avid swimmer, but we decided decades ago we would prefer to have the full use of our backyard as an outdoor 'living room', devoting some effort to maintaining a garden. Most of our neighbours have both their swimming pool and ample room for gardens, though the work involved in installing and maintaining a garden doesn't appear to have appealed to them, while the work involved in maintaining a pool does. Each to their own.

Over the decades we have gradually built the gardens we maintain at both the front and back of the house, to suit our aesthetic taste. We have planted many trees, some of which are no longer there; the plum and apple trees simply failed to thrive and were supplanted by a weeping Mulberry, Purple Smoke Tree, Alberta spruce, Magnolia and a Corkscrew Hazel in the backyard. As well, we've planted a proliferation of shrubbery including hydrangeas, burning bush, spirea and others.

It's a similar story in the gardens at the front of the house, but there ornamental crab trees are included among the Weeping Caragena and Mulberry, Weeping Cypress, Yews and Blue Spruces and again a number of shrubs such as Japanese quince, hydrangeas and spireas. Add to that my habit of squeezing flowering perennials into any available space, and there's no room left for annuals whose habit it is, unlike the perennials, to bloom constantly throughout the summer months.

Which led us to supplement the gardens with annuals, filling garden pots scattered here and there, of all sizes and shapes to accentuate the architecture, form and texture of the garden. It has become routine for us to empty them in the late fall and store them awaiting the arrival of spring when they're once more filled with garden soil, peat moss and aged manure, then planted afresh with garden-nursery-derived cultivars of many types of annuals, augmenting those bulbs that I overwinter in our basement.

 The rewards are numerous and never-ending, a treat for our senses, an ever-evolving landscape of beautiful textures, colours, and the occasional visitor; birds, butterflies, dragonflies, toads, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, insects and stray plants, all welcome to make our summer abode theirs.