Are there parts of your garden, home, or life that leave you perennially dissatisfied? Do those same sources of dissatisfaction get ignored because the presses of business, leisure or ordinary disinclination get in the way?
If the answer to any of the above is “yes”, we have something in common. I am ignoring the uncomfortable parts of my house for the moment because it is gardening season. I am looking at the area—it can hardly be called a garden bed—on the south side of my house. The problem is murkiness, lack of cohesion and deferred plant maintenance, and the overall consequence is ugliness, which makes me upset and disturbs my horticultural equilibrium.
I generally cope with that by not looking at or even passing through the area. Now, however, others may be visiting the garden, so ignoring the issue is no longer an option. It is time to get out the tools, roll up my sleeves and have the Tylenol and heating pad at the ready.
The area is defined by three overgrown holly trees, each of which reaches up past the second story of the house. One of them should be removed, but that will not happen until fall, when bird nesting season is over. In the meantime, two of the hollies present with scores of long, dead branches close to their bases. The branches, which reach out like tentacles, can be dispatched with the pruning saw or loppers, but there are so many of them that removal will take some amount of strenuous effort from me. Once those braches are chopped or lopped, they will have to be bundled up for disposal and taken to the curb.
On the opposite side of the path in the same part of the garden is a magnificent yellow-flowered ‘Elizabeth’ magnolia. There is nothing wrong with it, but its lowest branch is casing too much shade on the garden bed underneath it. Lopping it off, or “branching up” as some gardeners say, is an option that won’t harm the tree, but will lighten that part of the landscape. That branch is thicker than the thickest of the dead holly branches, so it will require even more concerted effort.
Once all that work is done, I can use my miraculous new hedge trimmer to give good haircuts to the weigela and spirea that stand adjacent to the magnolia. They bloomed magnificently this spring, but are overdue for trimming. The lilac that grows near them has long reached for the heavens in its effort to find a bit of light. It should have been thoroughly pruned about three years ago, but since I was already avoiding the area at that time, the pruning never happened. Now it is time to remove the thickest of the stems, so the younger stems can produce more flowers next spring. Another lilac, just over the fence in the upper back garden needs the same treatment. It has been sending out scores of root suckers this year, which I interpret as a cry for help. Dispatching the root suckers is easy. Doing the restoration pruning is harder.
Once all of that heavy work is done, I will have to consider the fate of three rose bushes that have been struggling in the area under the magnolia for years. They bloomed abundantly when the magnolia was a sapling, but now bloom fitfully if at all. One of the roses is an old favorite, ‘Rosa Mundi’, which has all kinds of legends attached to it. The roses are striped and quite beautiful, and I have visions of actually seeing some next year. Its companion rose, ‘Variegata di Bologna’ is another celebrated striped variety that managed three flowers this spring. The third rose is ‘Alastair Stella Gray’, a rambler that would take over the world if it could. It is screaming to be cut way back and removed to a suitable support. My original vision of encouraging ‘Alastair’ to clamber romantically up the magnolia hasn’t worked out, so it is time for a different solution. It is possible that the money I save by not hiring garden minions to do all the pruning referenced above will allow me to invest in a sturdy arbor or trellis after the tree company performs holly removal surgery in the fall. Doing so would transform my garden of eternal frustration into something more closely resembling a miniature garden of earthly delights.
The problem with finishing all that renovation in timely fashion before the arrival of the garden visitors is that every Saturday and many of the Sundays this spring have been deluges, forcing me to postpone much of the work on the south side of the front garden, while simultaneously working hard to ignore the unholy mess indoors in the cellar. That is another source of consternation that I am saving for concentrated attention in the winter season. Needless to say, I refuse to limit myself by specifying which winter season in the next three years I will reserve for that effort.
One way or another, the garden work will get done. I just have to remember not get out the electric power tools in the midst of this weekend’s anticipated deluge.