Visit The Moon Gate in My Backyard
Yes, It's a Real Place!
The story behind my Substack’s name starts close to home—there’s a real Moon Gate in my backyard.
That’s right, after living in Park Slope, Brooklyn for ten years, I moved to Buffalo, New York with my young family and, to my surprise—fell in love with gardening.
Four years ago, I didn’t know how to plant a single flower, but over the past few years, I’ve developed an impressive enthusiasm for digging in the dirt.
It started in my front yard, where the garden was bordered with these sad little white stones that I removed and filled with marigolds, zinnias, lamb’s ear, and a Japanese maple. This garden magickally seems to expand a few feet every year (much to my husband’s chagrin).
But my backyard had no real identity. She had no character, no landmarks, no real plants. It was just a strip of grass waiting to be reimagined.
My neighbor Judi is an exceptional gardener with a master’s in horticulture to accompany her green thumb. She monitors the monarch butterflies in her yard every year, has an evergreen garden from different climate zones, and she just recently sent me a text message with a picture of how she is planned out her color blocking in her garden.
I went to her house one afternoon and told her about my dreams to turn my backyard into something more. She filled my hands with gardening books for “inspiration.” After flipping through the glossy pages of these gorgeous books, I made a plan—I wanted a Moon Gate!
I love the serenity and calm of a Japanese garden and wanted the gates to feel like a portal to a new world. So I made the leap, and the arches came in May of 2021.
The Moon Gate quickly beckoned for accompaniment, so I grabbed some foxgloves from my favorite nursery, Lavocats, lamb’s ear from my front yard, and scattered all the seeds I could find.
My mom was getting rid of some big slate stones from her porch, which made the perfect circular path and inspired a new flower bed mirroring the circle behind the gates.
I got a honeysuckle to climb the trellis of the Moon Gate and a ghost clematis on the other side that’s still rooting.
Every year, Moon Gate garden becomes more defined and takes more shape.
This year, I invested in some $5 milkweed seeds from Live Monarchy (they will send you 150+ seeds for the price of shipping). Once my seeds came, I put them in a tiny portable greenhouse I have in my living room, and when the weather was right, I moved them to the flower bed behind the gate.
Milkweeds are the only plants on which monarchs will lay their eggs and the only food source for monarch caterpillars. So hopefully, my daughters and I can welcome some butterflies later this summer!
There are a few other details I’m excited to share, so I’m planning on doing a full garden video tour when everything is in full bloom.
What about you? Have you been growing? What’s in your garden?
With love from Under the Moon Gate,
Erin
Intuitive Medium & Documentary Filmmaker
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