A Garden is You

You can tell a lot about a person’s outlook on life by looking at the company they keep, in their garden. I have always had this notion that a perennial garden, with its extreme diversity of color, size, shape and texture is an open window into the gardeners soul. Much like a painting or a sculpture affords the artist the opportunity to express to the world 'I am here and this is what I make of life'.

Some gardens are orderly and formal, others are, well, less formal and less organized. An overcrowded garden may indicate the designer wants to experience a little bit of everything that life has to offer and refuses to be limited by available space or existing boundaries.

Without trying to be judgmental or jumping to conclusions, here’s my view on how a garden can reflect the designers personality:

Vegetable garden – frugal and demands better quality food;

Herb garden – health conscious and mindful of our interaction with nature;

mono color – uncluttered and simple;

theme garden – playful, doesn’t take life too seriously;

small, low lying garden – uncertain and reserved;

bold colors and free-flowing plants – flamboyant, expressive;

mixed colors, shapes and sizes – non committal and unwilling to follow rules;

trimmed and formal – organized and perhaps a bit rigid;

Some gardens have lots of hardscape incorporated into them, such as benches, gazing balls, sundials, sculptures and other items that don’t actually go to support the growth of the garden flora but adds another dimension that further defines the designers character.

Then, of course there is signage that, in case you missed the point, just outright tells you what they think.

Gardening is something that, I think, should be experienced by everyone. Partly for selfish reasons and partly for an altruistic reason. If more of my neighbors had gardens it makes sense that there would be a greater opportunity to exchange seeds for plants I haven’t tried yet. :) Also, more people raising more gardens means more people in tune with nature, which could possibly help slow down our destruction of it.

I would like to say that gardening is becoming more popular, there is much discussion and no hard facts to prove one way or the other. The explosion in the number of garden blogs and websites might show that our population of gardeners is booming but I suspect this only reflects the proliferation of the internet to already existing gardeners. Sure, there are a few new gardeners coming onto the scene and maybe increasing food prices just might push more homeowners into the yard to grow their own food, but the jury is still out on that.

Expressing yourself through your garden is very therapeutic and personal. It becomes a place where we can escape the nine-to-five world where expectations of ourselves are not always our own. Some of us are more willing to share with the world what we have created. Some of us may not want to subject ourselves to anticipated criticism. Personally, I have found garden bloggers to be very supportive and if they do have a harsh opinion are willing to at least not acknowledge it in a blog.

If this post reaches someone who is not yet a gardener and is maybe thinking of starting your own plot, my advice is to just go for it. The satisfaction I get from pushing a shovel into the ground for the first time, knowing that I am about to create a fresh palette for my latest expression of myself, is priceless. Seeing plants ‘wake-up’ after a long winter of freezing temperatures brings a level of joy I haven’t found anywhere else. And the thrill of bringing wildlife to my yard knowing I am helping in their survival is beyond words.

The expression ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ comes to mind when I view a garden and I may not see it in the same way the designer intended. To me it may be more beautiful because I am seeing it from a less interactive way than they do for they have invested time, effort and money in getting their garden to look the way it does. Whereas, I am merely a passive observer and therefore have nothing invested in the interpretation of the design. Which reminds me, the true beauty of gardening is that you do it for yourself.

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Gardeners are a Dreamy Lot

Up every mornin just to keep a job

I gotta fight my way through the hustling mob

Sounds of the city poundin in my brain

While another day goes down the drain.

-- Five O’clock World – The Vogues

Some gardeners don’t have the time to garden but that doesn’t stop them from dreaming about one day starting one. Maybe they dream about creating their very own refuge from their five o’clock world, where they can sit and wind down from their daily stress. Maybe they dream of creating some beauty to counter the concrete jungle they spend more than a third of their day engaged in.

A good portion of a gardeners life is spent dreaming. Before the first plan is put to paper, before the first seed is sown, before the first catalog is ordered, we all envision what our perfect dream garden will look like.

If we are fortunate to find some spare time to start digging, we see a future peony or dahlia or rose beautifully blooming right where we sink our shovel. As our energy is expended in preparing the new plot, we find ourselves revitalized from the prospect of seeing our dream come true.

Time is the one necessary factor required to fulfill our dreams. Finding time to get started, stealing time to prepare the beds, grabbing spare time to put in seeds and new starts. Committing time to care for and coaxing the plants to take root. And of course time slows as we wait for each plant to mature and to develop into the dream we started out with.

Beginning a garden can be a stressful experience full of doubt and anticipation.

What will my garden look like? Will the roses, tulips and lilacs grow as big and beautiful as their pictures show? How often should I feed them? Will I lose everything to insects or diseases?

As you water and weed your expectant patch you see signs of new growth and your doubts begin to dissolve and your anticipation turns into encouragement. Soon, shoots become fully developed foliage and buds become blossoms. Your dreams begin turning into something you can actually see, feel and smell. You develop a new appreciation for life and the miracle that is nature.

Then nature sends a reminder of who is boss as the icy cold winds of winter arrives with its killing frost and piles of snow. Once again doubt and anticipation return and we have to wait. We sit impatiently, only slightly consoled by the knowledge that nature has done this for millennia and plants have survived over and over again. But still, this year, your hard work and time was invested. Did you follow the plan well enough to ensure your gardens survival? Will nature be forgiving of your first attempt at gardening? Will your dreams be for nothing?

As days turn into weeks, your attentions become focused on non-gardening activities. Realizing the fate of your garden is out of your hands, you begin relaxing enough to sleep all night again. Then, the endless stream of garden catalogs begin arriving and your dreams come flooding back.

Yes, we spend a lot of time dreaming. For without our dreams our gardens would seem like just another chore in our already busy lives.

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On seed catalogs and weather

Weather seems to be the big news item these days so I’ll start off about ours here in Utah. During the past week we have ranged from 16F overnight to highs in the upper 20’s. Clouds have been regular guests here with no signs of going away anytime soon. The humidity is pretty steady at 28-29%.

We got 3” of snow last Saturday and another 1” on Sunday. There is more snow predicted this week with possible rain on Friday. But we here in Utah have learned that predictions usually turn out to be wrong, or at least put off a few days.

With nothing much to do outside due to the cold, I am happy that I started receiving garden catalogs and it seems next years garden layout will soon need to be worked out. This year has flown by pretty quickly.

I feel fortunate that the garden beds and tools have been cleaned up last month and now the only thing hanging over me is planning for next year and seed starting.

I have a very small seed-starting operation which consists of a small folding card table under two four foot long shop lights. I can fit four seed trays on it, with a little overhang. The ambient room temperature in this little store room is around 60F and it was warm enough for most of the seeds I started last winter to germinate. I still feel the need to go over my notes and quiz the experts to determine what I can do to improve the germination rate. The heat mat was placed under the warm-season seeds, like tomatoes and peppers, and almost all of them came up. I still have some sterilized seed starting soil left from last year and a bunch of peat pots and trays so the supply situation seems to be okay.

I am happy with the overall size of my gardening landscape and plan on adding to it slowly and I keep having to remind myself that the gardens I see in my fellow gardeners’ blogs are more mature than mine as they have been at this a little longer than I have. This is the first winter for my perennial beds and as such I am anxious about how they will fair. It is both a test of the plants ability to survive temperature swings from teens to middle thirties that Utah is known for and it is a test of how well I have both interpreted what to do for their survival as well as what I have actually done.

In deciding what I want to plant this year I am a bit intimidated by what everyone else has accomplished. So many garden blogs I read show garden spaces that are much larger than mine. I have to restrain myself from going overboard and remember not to start more plants than what I have space for. But then I think, if I grow the plants then I will have to expand the beds for them. This could be a dangerous way to go and doesn’t fit in at all with my overall garden master plan. I have containers I could put them in until the bed is ready. Holding back and doing a little each year is the most difficult part of garden planning. So I will have to keep my seed order small.

As far as that planning thing goes, I had written down ideas over the past nine months of blog reading and recorded my ‘wish list’ on my computer. The problem is that I recently suffered a computer crash when my motherboard crapped out on me and I had not saved the latest version of my wish list. So, I have to rely on my memory, a scary prospect at best. All is not lost however, because in going through the garden catalogs I am sure I will be able to find something I want to plant, whether it fits in with my plan or not. I really do try to be disciplined, but I am making no promises.

Patience is a virtue, so they say, but spring is still way too far away.

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Do you have to plan a garden to become a gardener?

I want to thank Michelle of Garden Rant for her thoughts on garden planning. She states that garden planning is a ‘poisonous myth’.

I have to agree with her, garden planning made a paralytic, indecisive, procrastinator out of me. As a first year perennial gardener, I feel that my insight in this matter, being as fresh as it is, affords me some expertise on whether or not planning is ‘an important step’. I have been planning my perennial garden, literally, for years. I have drawn up so many plans I can’t even remember where I have put them all. Every house we have ever lived in has become a masterpiece of gardening excellence, if only in my own mind. Why did I never act on these most excellent plans? Because I didn’t feel I could pull it off.

Meeting the so-called ‘requirements’ of a true garden such as creating focal points, balancing ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ colors, creating a pleasing symmetry, and timing blooming factors for all-season color in order to be worthy of the distinction of being a garden and not just a plot of soil with plants on it was downright daunting.

I wanted something that would stop people in their tracks and exclaim their admiration. If they came to my door with a desire to learn the secrets of my masterful talent, even better.

But alas, I was fearful of taking the second step. What was the second step? What was required to take my plan from paper to full blooming reality? Should I overwhelm the soil with all things organic in an attempt to call forth those masters of soil tillage, the earthworm?

Should I hire a designer to get the all important sign-off on what I was certain was ‘the’ plan that would draw every garden periodical in the western hemisphere to my doorstep to learn my secrets?

What if I started my plants at the wrong time of year and they all died? What if, just after planting my precious beauties, our city became the scene of the most epic swarm of the most voraciously hungry insect population to ever darken our skies? What if, no matter what I planted, bees shunned my yard like the plague? In other words, gulp, what if I failed?

After all this planning, I still had cold feet. Nay, I had become so paralyzed with fear of failure of not living up to expectations of gardening experts everywhere who repeatedly recited the mantra of ‘plan, plan, plan that garden until you’ve got it right’ that I had finally reached the point where I would allow a garden nursery, Bluestone Perennials, choose the plants for me.

Yes friends, realizing that time will not stand still while I try to decide when to force my ‘frozen-to-the-chair’ butt to get up and actually plant something besides vegetables, the only decision I could make was to let someone else decide for me. I had reached a vulnerably weak moment in the career I had made of garden planning and came to the realization that I would probably never be able to reach any higher zenith in pursuit of the perfect garden than I already have without a good swift kick in the pants.

That kick in the pants came in the form of 59 plants that were guaranteed to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Guaranteed to meet the all important requirements of a perfectly planned garden i.e., ‘long season of bloom, different foliage textures and colors, and their ease of care’. I felt as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. If the landscape did not look beautiful, hey it isn’t my fault. Blame it on Bluestone Perennials. See, it says so right there in the catalog. Guaranteed satisfaction.

After planting their planned garden, I must admit, I felt that I had somehow cheated, and yet been cheated. I felt that, having not adhered to the unwritten law of a true gardener, ‘Thou must plan and plant your own garden’, that I cannot wear the badge of a true gardener.

Perhaps my guilt stems from the lingering effects of the poison I have been fed by gardening ‘experts’ attempting to indoctrinate me into the belief that I have to plan in order to become a real gardener.

Maybe if I told you that I bought this ready made garden for only one plot, then maybe I could be forgiven my transgression of trying to become a gardener overnight. I do have several other plots that remain a work in progress and are slowly being filled with ‘whim’ plants. For those plots, I confess to planning, although, not one of those plots actually matches my plans. Except for the shape of the beds.

Looking back on it now, I think that, maybe, buying that ready made garden helped propel me towards become a true gardener or, at least, it put me on the right path. Some of those plants died. Most survived. I have now gone through the trauma of loosing plants, just like a real gardener. I have managed to nurse some plants back from the brink of death, just like a real gardener. I did actually buy perennial plants without any real idea of where they might end up, all the while knowing they might not survive wherever they went. If nothing else, this alone shows a willingness for independence from expert gardeners and shows that I am gaining enough confidence to go my own way, just like a real gardener.

I still have yet to go through at least one winter to make one complete cycle of being a practicing perennial gardener. Maybe then I can feel better about calling myself a real gardener. Oh, and about planning, I don’t think I will fret too much about it anymore. I have built up an immunity to their poison because I have come to realize that plants are going to make it or not whether I plan or not.

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