Recently a friend invoked the wrath of the Garden Gods. While trimming the winter-worn leaves of her hellebores, she came to a patch of the wonderful Eric Smith hybrid—Helleborus x ericsmithii. These hellebores don’t generally need trimming, because their beautifully marbled foliage remains good-looking right through the winter. Sometimes, however, all those lush green leaves obscure the lovely pinkish white flowers. My friend was forced to clip off some healthy leaves to liberate the blooms. Needless to say, she felt guilty. As all gardeners–or at least those with an ounce of normal superstition—know, removing healthy plant parts is almost certain to bring down the wrath of the Garden Gods. This will invariably result in something bad happening later on.
My friend’s sin was actually a hybrid of two separate ones, unnecessary pruning and harming healthy plants. Unnecessary pruning often means lopping off something by accident. For example, another friend’s husband was weed whacking a little too vigorously and severed the main stem of his wife’s purple-flowered clematis. The man may not have feared retribution from the Garden Gods, but he was terrified of retribution from his wife. Rushing into the house he seized a roll of plastic tape and used it to rejoin the severed stems. Fortunately, the Garden Gods were merciful and the unlikely repair job worked. The spliced clematis pieces grew back together and the plant bloomed later that summer. Over the course of the growing season, the husband’s vegetable garden suffered slightly more than usual from rabbit depredation, but that was to be expected. No crime goes completely unpunished, even if it is accompanied by creative attempts to make amends.
Of course, fear of the Garden Gods’ wrath keeps some people from pruning at all, even when a thorough pruning would do a wonders for a wayward specimen. This fear is what causes some perfectly good rhododendrons to grow to the size of mastodons. It also leads to that other heinous sin—harming a healthy plant. Many of my suburban friends would rather call landscapers to remove a vigorous, mastodon-size rhododendron than attempt the hard pruning that it really needs. The landscapers invariably come and do the job, replacing the mastodon with a new, French poodle-size rhododendron. Without proper pruning, the French poodle will eventually morph into a mastodon, but both homeowner and landscaper are undoubtedly banking on the fact that the property will be on its next owner by then. In the meantime, the Garden Gods take notice and generally perpetrate some kind of retribution that the sinners will not connect with the rhododendron murder. Lawn grub infestations are a top choice for this application.
Murder of an innocent plant can also be caused by neglect. This is almost never deliberate, but the Garden Gods take offense anyway. Neglect-based planticide often happens when a new plant isn’t watered regularly. Sometimes this neglect is even committed by people who should know better–avid gardeners who buy lots of new plants in spring when the garden centers are overflowing; then store those plants in holding areas pending installation. Time races away, leaving the plants to languish for weeks or sometimes even months. Guilt will usually impel gardeners to water the containers, but sometimes drought, hot weather or vacations intervene, resulting in plant death. When it happens, the guilty gardener generally wants nothing so much as to be rid of the evidence. He or she rushes to compost the wretched remains, pretending all the while that the whole sordid chain of neglect never happened.
The act of composting will not appease the Garden Gods. They invariably send their minions, usually deer or groundhogs, to remind the guilty parties that actions have consequences. If deer and groundhogs are unavailable due to other commitments, the Garden Gods may call up their personal paratroopers of death, aka dandelion seeds, and send them into the yard. This creates the maximum amount of trouble for the gardener with the minimum effort by the Garden Gods.
I think my friend with the hellebore leaves will only incur minimum wrath, if any. After all, her actions made the floral display more prominent and caused no permanent damage. She is also an extremely conscientious gardener, which should keep her squarely on the plus side of the Garden Gods’ ledger. I predict that in a week or two, my friend may notice the local herd of deer pausing to look longingly at her emerging hostas, but by the time she has the deer spray in hand, the pack of four-legged plant annihilators will have ambled off down the road. Mysterious forces will have made them aware that just a block south of my friend’s house, an unenlightened homeowner has taken down a perfectly good magnolia. Even the Garden Gods prioritize.