LESSONS
Three days from now my garden will be open to the public as part of a local fundraiser centered on art, music and gardens. The preparation for the event was a big part of my campaign to spend one year, beginning last February, making my garden as lovely as it could be.
Now that the big day is almost here, I am weeding, trimming, staking and installing plants while trying to calm myself with reflections on what I have learned during this process. Here, in no particular order, are the biggest lessons:
Garden With Abandon: Gardening has always come easily to me. I love being outside, hearing the birds, watching the butterflies, and, most of all, working with growing things. The process makes me feel so good that for a long time I thought that I should ration out that pleasure, and strengthen my character by putting more effort into things that came less easily. The lesson seems obvious, but this process has taught me that losing yourself in something that you love does not weaken your character. Spending guiltless blocks of time–sometimes three hours or more–in the garden was one of the best things that I have ever done for myself. Not only have I rethought my garden layout and the way that I work in it, but I have come up with solutions to all kinds of non-garden problems while weeding and laying down mulch. Quality time in the garden is wonderful, and if that’s all you can spare, then you have to get the most out of it, but quantity time is the rarest of pleasures.
Paint Pictures: I have always been a plant collector at heart, so my garden problems usually involve finding room for yet another interesting specimen. Now I am convinced that a plant collection–like any other collection–needs to be suitably framed and displayed. Preparing to open up the garden has made me realize how satisfying it is to create living pictures. I have a new appreciation for shapes, lines, colors, light and shadow, and the need to organize disparate visual elements into a harmonious whole. One side of my back garden always looked incomplete to me, despite pleasing groupings of plants. Putting one of my large houseplants on a pedestal in the back corner created a focal point that made the picture whole. It was a simple thing, but it made all the difference and it only took me about three years to figure out.
Never Underestimate the Value of Trimming, Tying and Staking: Cottage gardens like mine are supposed to look spontaneous, and even a bit untamed, but it’s important to balance all that spontaneity with some amount of control. If too many plants flop all over the place, the garden begins to look chaotic, paths become obstructed, and smaller plants can’t get enough breathing room. You can stake tall plants fairly unobtrusively, or arrange them so that they lean against or are supported by larger specimens. Shrubs and big plants, like the larger grasses, can be trimmed to facilitate traffic flow throw through the garden. They key is sensitivity. Plants should never look like they’ve just had a bad haircut.
Find the Shortcuts: Shortcuts are the gardener’s best friend. The most common include: cutting down on weeds by mulching, “digging” beds using the newspaper and mulch method, planting bulbs in trenches instead of installing them individually and using the weed whacker to get rid of the unwanted weeds in sidewalk cracks. Find the shortcuts that work best for you and use them. Nobody will know the difference.
Move Things Around: When I was a new gardener I was afraid that moving plants would kill them. Now I know that you can move just about any healthy plant, as long as you dig out a big enough root ball and water it until it becomes established in its new home. If a plant is too weak to survive transplanting, it will probably die in its current location anyway.
Adjust Goals: I tend to overestimate the amount of work that I can get done in a specific time period, whether the time period is one hour or five years. I avoid this by working incrementally, and making the increments small enough so that I can handle them. If I only have twenty minutes, I tackle a piece of one bed and make it as perfect as I can. When I miscalculate, or get interrupted, I readjust my goals to make the most of any remaining time. It’s less stressful than worrying about what I haven’t done. Goals, like budgets, are plans–sometimes you have to adjust them to accommodate changing circumstances.
Celebrate Every Step: Some gardeners can never be happy in their own gardens, because there is always something to do. Since I have been making my garden “as good as it gets”, I have had a thousand small moments of joy, when I have looked at a collection of plants or a newly reorganized bed, or a neatly pruned shrub, and thought, “Isn’t that beautiful?” Most of us cultivate plants because we love the process, but every once in awhile, you have to stop the process and celebrate the result. It’s the sweet icing on the dense cake of hard garden labor.