GARDENS OF AGE
Despite their best efforts, baby boomers are aging. Even the fittest baby boom gardeners are feeling twinges and pains as once-limber limbs and cooperative joints are transformed into achy appendages. Fortunately most baby boomers’ fingers can still find their way around a keyboard because they are beginning to think about doing what baby boomers do about any life issue–making a huge deal about it and publicizing it in the media. While these scribes are polishing their book pitches, two of their slightly older sisters have gotten a head start.
This week, veteran garden author Page Dickey appeared on the front page of the New York Times home section publicizing her new book, Embroidered Garden: Revisiting the Garden, about transforming her splendid garden to a simpler landscape that is easier for a seventy year old to maintain. A few years ago, writer Sydney Eddison wrote Gardening for a Lifetime, How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older, an eloquent, but somewhat less glossy book on facing up to a similar task in her garden. I haven’t read the Dickey book yet, but from the Times article it sounds as if the message is the same. When age makes caring for your garden difficult, simplify the garden. Eliminate labor intensive perennials and annuals and replace them with an array of flowering shrubs. Reduce the number of plant varieties and install easy-to-care-for specimens whenever possible. Emphasize garden architecture–trees and shrubs–over the ephemeral charms of smaller plants.
I don’t fear aging, though like every sensible person, I fear the physical and mental ailments that sometimes accompany aging. I know that I can’t live without a garden of some kind, though it doesn’t have to be my present garden. I already avoid labor intensive plants, but if I do buy them, they usually don’t last long in my laissez faire landscape.
I also need lots of flowers in my life. I get more pleasure from a single rose than a mile of perfect box hedging. It isn’t that architectural plants lack beauty. I have them in my garden and admire them. I just love flowers. Since I first set up housekeeping on my own as a graduate student, I have always had flowers in my living spaces. I take great pride in supplying many of those blossoms from my own garden. As I have gotten older, my appreciation of beauty in general has deepened and my love of flowers has only grown. I am not sure that restricting myself to flowering shrubs and architectural plants is going to make me happy in old age.
I think busy gardeners–and most of us fall into that category–have already sown the seeds that will grow into the kind of changes we will need as we grow older. For example, I gave up planting spring-flowering bulbs in individual holes long ago. I plant in clumps, installing three or five bulbs in a single large hole that I can dig and fill quickly with a sharp spade. Those bulbs are likely to be species and varieties that will form increasingly larger clumps over time, making additional digging less necessary. If I feel compelled to grow something like tulips, which probably won’t come back for a second season, I grow them in pots.
My annuals are also likely to be in pots that can be dropped into the planting scheme when the flowers are at their best and removed when they are not. I have a mix of lovely terra cotta and pottery containers, but I can imagine myself moving towards lighter weight plastic ones as age advances.
Mulching takes a strong back, plus lots of time and patience. I already have limits in all three areas, so I use ground covers as green mulches whenever possible, making sure those ground covers are tough enough to take being trimmed with a string trimmer. Anyone who is worried about the groundcover/mulch question should try planting the low-growing erodium or heron’s bill. Start with one plant now and even if you are already fifty-five, you will have all the available bare space in your garden covered–without additional work–long before you are eligible for Social Security.
Eventually my husband and I will probably follow the aging herd and downsize, trading our current house for something a bit smaller. Right now I have a vision of a smaller house on a larger property, which translates into less time spent on the house and even more time spent in the garden.
The Dickey and Eddison books have important things to say, but I also think that intelligent people have always found ways to cope with the aging process. I used to weed on my knees; now I alternate bending and kneeling. When I get too creaky to do either, I’ll use a long”“handled hoe. I will simplify my garden, but only to the extent that I get rid of any plant that doesn’t compensate for its upkeep by providing a full measure of joy. I will keep my roses, because my favorite varieties already thrive with very little care and life is too short to live without garden roses
Of course, part of my master plan involves acquiring a large sum of money so that I can hire a squad of strong men to do the heavy garden work, thereby saving my back and knees. The work crew will also free up my time so that I can document my own garden of age in a book–just like all the other baby boomers.