ENTWINED IN TWINE
Sometimes people approach me and ask for the secret of my gardening success. I would never say so, but I suspect some of those people might have to redefine the word “success” if they actually saw my garden. Still, I feel no compunction at all about revealing my secret weapon in the ongoing battle to impose civility on my home landscape–green garden twine.
The Master Gardeners I know live and die by their compost piles. The artist/gardeners of my acquaintance will put anything in the garden as long as it serves the artistic concept. I live in the kind of suburb where we don’t admit to knowing any kitschy gardeners, but I am sure those invisible individuals swear by their collections of gnomes, wind chimes or crown tires. I swear by green garden twine. It has made me the gardener that I am today.
Green garden twine is indispensible because it’s cheap, nearly invisible and easy to use. I think of it as the gardener’s equivalent of duct tape. Like my father before me, I hold my house together with duct tape. Unlike my father, I keep my garden together with green garden twine. As long as the knots hold, I am in good shape.
The following are a few uses for green garden twine:
Cosmetic Surgery
In early spring we had an unseasonable snowstorm that coated everything with a thick blanket of heavy, wet snow. The privet sagged, the daffodils struggled to raise their pretty heads and the young trees bowed under the unaccustomed weight. The snow melted fairly quickly, but left a mess in its wake. When I inspected the damage, I saw privet branches sticking out at awkward angles–not broken, but bent in the wrong direction. Several of the larger rosebushes had the same problem. Instead of standing fairly upright, my magnificent ‘Prairie Dancer’ rosebush had long canes bending every which way. One of the strongest canes was involved in a kind of forced familiarity with a nearby hydrangea and I knew that the relationship wasn’t good for either shrub. I grabbed a new ball of twine and went to work.
After clipping off a few privet branches that couldn’t be saved, I straightened the rest by tying them securely to stronger, straighter branches in the center of the hedge. Suddenly the privet stood proud and tall once more, without the unsightly gaps that hard pruning can cause.
I got ‘Prairie Dance’ out of its unnatural embrace with the hydrangea, lassoed all the wayward canes and pulled them all towards the center. Now the shrub has a dancer’s upright carriage once more and has shown its gratitude by producing a bumper crop of cerise blooms.
Disciplining Overachievers
Sometimes I forget to prune back flowering shrubs right after they bloom. By the time the next season rolls around, the shrubs are unruly, blocking paths and limiting access to certain beds and borders. Since I don’t want to cut them back before bloom time, I take a double thickness of green garden twine, secure it to an inner branch, wind it around the stragglers and pull them towards the center of the plant. This clears the walkways and access points. When it is time to prune again, I just cut the twine, let the obstreperous branches fall where they may and lop them off.
Keeping Things Tidy
Perennials in cottage-type gardens like mine are supposed to flop over, softening the edges of paths. However, sometimes they flop too much and risk being trampled. I haven’t got the time to stake individual specimens, but I will corral groups of floppers with a couple of stakes and some garden twine. You can also use stakes and twine to create a makeshift grow-through support for peonies and other big, fluffy headed plants. This technique is very helpful if you have a shortage of either money or storage space for those lovely manufactured supports that are in all the high end garden catalogs.
Emergency Aid
The rose trellis that was secured to the outside wall of my garage toppled over recently in an epic windstorm. It was covered with a vigorous, about-to-flower climbing rose. I was scheduled to have company and the drill that I would have used to make new pilot holes for screws was out of commission. Seizing the moment, I snatched up some self-adhesive hooks that I had in the kitchen drawer and stuck them in strategic places on the garage wall. After giving them a few minutes to set, I secured the trellis to the hooks with green garden twine. I’ll drill those pilot holes and do the job properly one day soon, but for now the roses are blooming away and nobody is the wiser.
Green garden twine is like duct tape, but it also rivals aspirin in its ability to relieve pain. Keep it close at hand when you venture out in the garden. You never know when you will come up with a new use for it.