The Secretest of Gardens

Past the dog run and through the arbour gate lies the secretest of gardens. It must be this way because all the critters have access to the front yard. Our front yard gives off the impression no one lives here but the back tells another story. Every plant and flower carefully curated and protected from beasts. 

Not to say everything is thriving back here but at least protected by the trees, the fence, the gate,  these precious plants have a fighting chance.

And fight they must. Or I must. Let me tell you, gardening is not for cowards or flakes. You have to want it pretty bad to not just throw in the trowel (see what I did there?). 

I started out wanting a cut flower garden for my daughter to use for her floral business.  I knew, like Rome, it wouldn’t be built in a day.  But I did think after several years I would have figured it out and would need to buy an acreage to keep my plan going.  No rush on the acreage honey,  I just get one species going and another one dies.  My garden is not growing by leaps and bounds, something new replaces something that didn’t make it over the winter and so space is always available. 

Aside from the beasts and the climate, some things are doing well.  You have to learn to outsmart Mother Nature.  Can that be done?  Well, it obviously DOES take learning by trial and error but I think it can be done.  And to this end, I plod on. I can’t get disillusioned and give up. I just can’t.  I’m not a scientist but getting closer to one every growing season.   Picking other gardeners’ brains.  Sleuthing past homes with glorious foliage trying to figure out their secret.   Reading everything I can find on the internet.  Thank you for the Internet whomever.  I realize we don’t live in the best growing zone in the country or the world.  Oh how I wish I did.  But that is not to be, so I have to determine to make all the things grow here.  Well not all the things, but the hardiest flora for our region and then nurture it and baby it and pray over it (seriously) and sometimes replace it with something else.  Sometimes, as a gardener, you have to let go.  Well, I guess, even as a human you have to learn to let go.  

So I am letting go of my echinacea, shasta daisies, topiary lilac tree, annabelle hydrangea bushes, my huchera (coral bells) and I’m moving on.  Not to mention the grass.  What happened down there, under the earth this past winter?  Did the soil have its own pandemic?    And then there is the little issue of the leaves not falling off the trees last fall and so when old man winter descended with its white flaky rain,  it weighed down the branches and the columnar aspens are no longer columns. Oy Vey.

But I do not give up.  I must stay strong.  Must stay determined if I want to see beauty on the earth. Or at least in my backyard.  And so I tenderly dig out the roots of the dead perennials and I work the soil once again and I try something new (after much research). Interestingly enough, the plants that have done the best are the ones that I have uprooted from friends gardens and replanted into mine.  So I’m thinking there must be some lesson or  phenomena to latch onto there.   I’d love to get to the place where I could offer my friends pieces of my garden.  Just as friendships thrive under nurturing, so do their plants. 

I don’t know where I am going with this, but all this to possibly say, that there are very many lessons and metaphors for life to be found in the garden and in the pursuit of the loveliest and thrivingest of gardens. Much to learn.  But also much to cherish.  I cherish every sweet little bloom I find every morning when I run out in my nightgown to see what happened overnight.  I guess I garden for me.  Unless I invite someone over for tea and a lovely afternoon, I am the only one who enjoys my little postage stamp garden.  An acreage?    Probably not any time soon.