GETTING PHYSICAL IN THE GARDEN
Three seasons a year, nurseries are full of “easy care” plants. Garden and shelter publications routinely trumpet the virtues of these green wonders, which, if you believe the write-ups, do everything except dig holes and install themselves. In the American nursery business, the trend over the last decade has been to sell more and more plants that provide instant impact. Small perennials in six-inch pots have been trampled into near extinction by a stampede of two or three year old plants in gallon pots–forced in greenhouses so they are in full bloom at peak sale times. All of this is so the gardener doesn’t have to indulge in the working and waiting that is usually required to produce a really fine garden.
Everyone knows that if you fertilize your property with enough cash, you can have an “instant” garden, and there is nothing wrong with that. A phone call or two will summon a designer who will be delighted map out your planting scheme. A landscape crew will follow him or her, armed with a large number of mature plants and an ocean of mulch. Depending on the size of your acreage, you will end up, after a day or a week, with an “instant” garden. You will not have had to break a sweat or get dirty. In fact, you will be able to wander through your new garden in good clothes.
Occasionally I find that prospect alluring, but most of the time, I love the physicality of gardening. I have worked the soil all my life, but I still have the desire to get down on my knees to weed or stand on tiptoes to clip off stray branches. I feel exhilarated by speed weeding, when I yank out the garlic mustard and purslane so fast that I am out of breath at the end of the process. Of course, I do have to be careful not to fling aside fledgling plants in the process, but the joy of the effort makes the occasional casualty easier to bear. There is nothing better for my spirits or my garden than attacking a project with physical abandon.
The other day I renovated a part of the garden that has troubled me for years. The catalyst for this event was a really bad day that convinced me it was time for some serious garden therapy. I went out early in the next morning armed with all my tools and ready to make some big changes. I dug, divided, rearranged and replanted eight enormous daylilies. I pruned a gargantuan rosebush, crawling underneath it to lop away masses of dead canes near the base. A rambunctious trumpet vine, growing as a standard or tree-form plant, had spread its stalks far and wide. I lopped them all off in just a few minutes. All of this work was done at a rapid pace and I broke a sweat in the first ten minutes–well before the heat of the day would have done the same job. By the end of the session several hours later, I felt exhilarated; my heart pumping and my synapses firing. With all that accelerated synaptical action, it isn’t surprising that inspiration hit me too. I came inside for a break, drank about a quart of water and wrote a 500 word magazine essay before going back out for an intense weeding session. By that time I had a little less vigor than when I started, but I had enough left over to fling crabgrass, common monkey flower and a host of other weeds over my shoulder and onto a big pile, which I carted off to the composter. At the end of the whole process I was tired, but it was the not the self-perpetuating tiredness of boredom; it was the satisfactory tiredness that comes after vigorous physical activity. Collapsed in the Adirondack chair on my porch, I could also take satisfaction in the tangible result–a more beautiful, simplified garden “room”.
I know that some people get the same feelings from running, playing handball or driving racecars. I also know that others simply don’t have the strength or energy to attempt the kinds of high effort gardening that makes my gardening life so worthwhile. Someday I will be in the same boat, but I can’t help thinking that vigorous outdoor labor also helps stave off old age. Over time, gardening with energy makes you a smarter gardener and those smarts will help you figure out what to do when the energy flags.
So, for right now, I don’t want an “easy care” garden. I love colorful plants that I can ignore sometimes, but to my way of thinking it is the pruning, weeding and, frankly, the sweating that makes a garden truly your own. Besides, vigorous gardening gives you aerobic activity combined with strength training–all without gym fees.
I am not young. I am not thin. I do not have a lot of disposable time. But I do have a passion for gardening that drives me to greater feats of strength and stamina than I might otherwise be able to manage. There is, after all, something elemental about working with the soil. You can get really dirty with absolute impunity and engage in bloodless hand-to-hand combat with evil foes. Controlling stronger plants so the weaker, cultivated beauties can flourish is a noble endeavor. Pundits have said it for centuries–if more people did this kind of battle in gardens, fewer people would probably be inclined to do battle with each other. Vigorous gardening is vigorous engagement with life.