PLANTS GONE WILD
If I were making a garden reality video right now, it would be titled “Plants Gone Wild.” I would film it on location in my upper back garden, a fifteen by twenty foot area that is home to a rose covered arch and a rose-covered pillar, three other rose bushes, several standardized roses of Sharon, numerous daylilies, a butterfly bush, catmint, coreopsis, strawberries, blueberries, a lilac, a hardy hibiscus, Russian sage, a small stand of stinking hellebore, a couple of peonies, a standardized trumpet vine and lots of vinca.
In the spring, when everything was young and sweet and just emerging from winter dormancy, the plot looked lovely. Now it looks chaotic. Sometimes I am strongly tempted to rip it all out and start again.
But where is the valor in that? The plants are well grown and some have taken years to establish. The situation demands that I discipline myself so I can discipline the greenery.
Early in the spring, I cut back all the roses, butterfly bushes and other wayward shrubs on the property. Some of them looked so bad afterwards that I feared for their lives. My fears were groundless. Without exception, the shrubs bounded back as if I had given them steroids instead of haircuts. Now all I can do is arm myself with clippers, loppers and a pruning saw and, like King Henry V’s army at Harfleur, go once more into the breach.
But the chaos in my upper back garden is more than just a case of a few overgrown specimens. Some plants are going to have to be relocated. A few will be sacrificed. If I want a coherent space, I have to be willing to undertake a lot of manual labor.
The roses of Sharon are a problem, albeit a beautiful one. There are simply too many of them for such a small place. Even grown as standards or short trees, with the horizontal branches cut back severely, they impede movement through the garden. Moving two of them to join part of a row along the plot’s south border, would certainly liberate space. Doing it within the next few weeks would also mean a sacrifice of this year’s blooms, not to mention a colossal backache.
Still, I might do it anyway. A plan forestalled is a doomed plan–at least in my case. Maybe I could compromise and move only the biggest, most obstreperous rose of Sharon, leaving the other until fall. This would give me mid-summer blooms and a more accessible garden.
The strawberries will go into large pots. Sprawled on the ground as they are now, the plants produce a minimal harvest of relatively small berries. If I am going to go to the trouble to grow strawberries at all, I would like larger, easier to pick fruit. Fortunately moving the strawberries will be far less onerous than moving roses of Sharon.
The real problem with the upper back garden is that I have installed a lot of plants, but never figured out exactly what works best in the space. Most of the area is sunny and somewhat protected–perfect for the roses that are my great horticultural love. I may re-create the upper back garden as beds of roses, lavender and catmint, with spring bulbs for early color. Of course I will also have to annex my neighbor’s yard to accommodate all the evicted plants.
The center of the plot is a wide brick circle connected by a short brick walk to several stone steps that lead into the lower garden. If I did a lot of hard labor, I could create a ring of green grass around the brick circle and then surround that with rose beds. Once the existing plants were vanquished and the area planted and mulched, the number of plant varieties would be considerably reduced, as would the labor and maintenance,
But the more I think about the ring of grass, the less appealing it becomes. Grass would not have a real purpose in the space and would have to be trimmed regularly–if only with the string trimmer. I would much rather deadhead a few extra rosebushes.
One plant that can definitely go is the standardized trumpet vine. It is amazingly healthy, but I have to clip it every five minutes to keep it from taking over my entire property. Because it gets such frequent clippings, it only produces a flower or two every other year. I’ll try to find it a good home with one of my gardening friends.
So for now, I’ll start clearing space with the idea of adding roses. Gardening is a little like home renovation–anything can happen once you start clearing away obstacles and opening things up. I may end up with a rose bed or inspiration may strike in mid-project and take me in a different direction. I will put my faith in the process.