How Does Your Garden Grow?

One of my dearest friends S has taken the Penn State University Master Gardener course.  I almost took it with her but the timing wasn't right.  Gardening is only one of the facets of S, but as I've grown I've come to see that its roots go deep.

Growing up in the deep south, the sun, heat and humidity baked the drive to work the soil right out of me, even though it's in my bones.  My paternal grandfather was a farmer until the Great Depression moved his family into town to run a grocery store.  Grammaw had bantam (banty) chickens, figs, a walnut tree, a snowball bush, and gave Mother a cutting of her white climbing rose that grew up the side of our brick storage room.  I loved sticking my nose in those roses and inhaling.  When I was six, Daddy cut down a perfect climbing tree, a large maple, in our front yard.  I was overwhelmed with a sadness that confused both me and my parents as I wailed at their seeming callous treatment of such a majestic living thing.  In the 70s, Daddy tilled a garden for Mother, who always researched and used the latest in technology - in this case ground newspapers as mulch.

I never recognized my penchant for growing things until moving to New Jersey, the garden state, where the weather was almost paradise in the summer.  Just before leaving the even hotter climes of south Georgia, my sweet friend E did something to spark my interest that I shall never forget.  She planted pansies by my mailbox just after my daughter was born.  I was so touched that someone would put forth what seemed like such a great effort, just for me.  

Before leaving, our mutual friend M, whose brother had lived in NJ had said, "Oh they have the BEST produce!"  Surely it was impossible for any other state come close to a true Georgia peach, but those Jersey folks did!  White peaches, yellow cherries, big fat broccoli, the sweetest, most beautiful orange-yellow cherry tomatoes I had ever tasted, Sun Gold.  Once I met L from across the street, whose back yard was filled with color and textures that I never new existed, I never turned back.

It was in NJ where I discovered Community Supported Agriculture, and organic gardening, and best of all perennials.  L was the queen of perennials.  I was amazed by her processes, by the work she put into that garden and the results were breathtaking.  It is a whole other world.  She would have the grass cutter pour the clippings in the corner of her yard and over the week she would take the free, nutrient filled clippings and mulch the base of her plants.  She would dead head, she would fertilize and each week it was a wonderland to see what she had planted and what was blooming.

Mother was dying, I was pregnant with my last child and when I left town with my two little ones to let Mama go, L did what any true master gardener would do.  I came home to see that my little piece of ground and tiny seedlings had morphed into a tidy, weed free garden, just ready for me to tend to.  Keeping those struggling plants alive that summer helped me to ride the unending waves of grief as I faced my baby's birth and my future years of motherhood without my mother.  Just as the magic was beginning.  

So how does your garden grow?  

Perennials:  Moving to Pennsylvania provided a new plot of land to plan and plant.  S was my inspiration there, tirelessly adding garden beds filled with new and more amazing plants.  My husband built a beautiful picket fence around the front and I spent years filling the periphery of that house with plants - blueberries, asparagus, herbs and veggies in the back, perennials in the front.  Other than vegetables, I didn't want to 'waste time' or money with annuals; perennials come back every year, what a bargain!  Plus we perennial gardeners know that we have to share, and every time my peach day lilies would bloom I thought of S, I still do. When I moved out I took those lilies, and my peonies and blueberries with me, and those 'delicate' peonies proved their worth again by surviving a second move.  They remind me how tough, and beautiful and fragrant they are, each summer.

Sharing:  Gardening became my respite from the harried life of trucking kids and running a household, and each new type of plant was like a child, teaching me as we grew together.  I felt connected to my grandfather, my grandmother and my mother in that first Pennsylvania garden, and before my blind aunt died I had gotten some of her Memphis plants.  One day I will plant a ginkgo tree in her honor.  Aunt Lilyan had at least a dozen ginkgoes rooted in jars on the screen porch we had played in with our cousins years before, and on my last visit before she died, she proudly showed me one of her seedlings that towered twenty feet tall.  Something really grand can come from a simple patient act. 

Annuals:  When you move into a new-to-you place, especially by yourself, it's important to add your personal touch.  Those were tough times.  Aside from the emotional trauma of significantly downsizing and leaving the home I had raised my children in, I hadn't yet found full time work and money was tight.  This was a gardening home though, and that first May those beds and my pots were begging for flowers.  That's when I really fell in love with annuals - boy scout annuals I bought from church.  Worthy cause, instant gratification, for a very low price!  Those tiny impatiens plugs were like bright pink flower-shrubs by the end of the summer.  So many walkers in my new neighborhood would shout out how pretty they looked.  My pots overflowed with color - planting gave me that familiar contentment of a purpose; watching them grow and bloom showed me the perpetual renewal of life even when facing challenges.

Mulch:  I'm a lazy mulcher.  My first attempt involved landscape fabric.  In NJ, 9+ months pregnant trying to cut holes after clearing the mulch to plant bulbs.  The weeds would come up through the holes, or even worse, grow on top of the fabric.  I don't like lugging buckets of mulch from the driveway every spring.  For years I watched my tiny neighbor A, lug big bags of pine bark nuggets and pour them around her beds.  Just a few bags each year.  Never saw her pulling weeds.  My kind of mulching.  I'm lucky to live in a small town where the hardware store can deliver a few dozen bags right onto my front porch, practically the same day.  If they're good and dry they're not really that heavy, and a dusting of a few new bags over the base every year makes things look good as new.  If the foundation is good, all you need is a little sprucing up to look good as new.

Straw:  When I bought this house, my friends, the previous owners had an enormous vegetable garden plot in the back yard, covered with straw and ready to plant.  After having some overgrown shrubs removed the next year I decided to do the same, except the excavator apparently didn't know the difference between straw and hay, so after that second summer I had a garden full of grass - the hay had sprouted.  Then the weeds, taller than me marched in and took over.  My garden told me it was too big for me to handle, time to downsize.

Raised Beds:  Do you know a handy college kid or two?  Two of my son's friends had graduated and were still searching for work.  They built me two raised beds out of cedar boards in the early summer, scooping the soil from my wayward vegetable garden before the weeds had taken hold, then covering what was left in black plastic in preparation for grass the next year.  We helped each other and I had squash enough to share with everyone I visited that summer.

Grass:  My daughter and I cut the grass that first summer after the move.  She's never minded that kind of work, well as long as she was in town and in the mood.  I felt such pride in my new cozy home and I enjoyed going to bed bone tired after working the grass every week.  Then I got a full time job in my field, and the next summer I felt so overwhelmed and yes, I admit, sorry for myself.  I didn't ask to be by myself.  Everyone else is married and can work together to do this crap, but I have to do it all alone.  Life is so unfair.  When my counselor suggested I consider paying someone to do the work I balked, after all I HAVE to do it all myself, I'm alone.   Found out it was just a few dollars a week and only for the summer.  I came home to freshly cut grass.  I helped a son of the neighborhood with his new lawncare business.  My flowers we calling me.  Hmmm, I guess I don't have to do it ALL. Free at last!

Herbs:   Ok I admit it, I mostly plant herbs for the fragrance.  I do love to cook (but only when I love to cook) and fresh herbs from the garden can't be beat, even from ice cubes frozen at summer's end and thrown into that stockpot in midwinter.  Really though, I get the most pleasure out of pinching a basil leaf, or stripping a sprig of lemon thyme, tickling rosemary and smelling my fingers, bending a lemongrass blade, shredding a chocolate mint leaf.  Peppermint leaves are great for a summer mojito.  Lavender buds plucked just before blooming made some great sachets one Christmas.  Sage, well it's really good for my white turkey bean garlic soup recipe, but it's awfully pretty too, especially the tri-color variety.  It's a tiny thing, that perfume at my fingertips, a little pleasure to be thankful for.

Friends:  When you have a garden your plants are like your offspring.  Tending to them, seeing them flourish and grow and get strong, clearing out the dead growth to make room for new is a worthy purpose.  And the fruits of your labors, well what friend wouldn't want a vase of color and texture fresh cut from your very own garden for a dinner party, or a huge perfumed peony blossom for the dessert table?   Those plants have a purpose, use them!  Even if it's just a splash of winterberry in a mason jar, a forced sprig of forsythia, pussy willow or dogwood, or a tiny spray of Lily of the Valley in a bud vase to adorn someone's night stand.  


I recommend the book Square Foot Gardening.  It's got a boatload of creative ideas for very efficiently growing a nice vegetable garden.

The best place to buy plants?  Not the big box stores, well except maybe sometimes.  I love to make an adventure of it.  I live in a rural area and there are at least a dozen places to choose from.  I know where to get the best variety, where to get those exotic plants, where to get the best annuals, and the place that I have to go to, just because I like them so much.  

Planting pots?  Adding new landscaping?  I am a shameless copy cat.  Check out what neighbors, local businesses and of course Pinterest folks do.  

No resources for custom built raised beds?  Go to your local big-box hardware store and find all kinds of inexpensive kits.