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Sunday Opinion:The Romance Of Possibility

The very same Louise Beebe Wilder whose book on rock gardening (Pleasures and Problems Of A Rock Garden) I mentioned in last Sunday’s post, also penned several lines about gardening that are among my most favorite.  “In her own garden, every woman may be her own artist without apology or explanation.  Here is one spot where each may experience the romance of possibility”.  No wonder it is so often quoted by gardeners and garden writers alike.  “The romance of possibility”  so succinctly describes the source of that compulsion which makes every gardener put a shovel to soil-again and again-season after season.  I suppose there are those people who have gardened, and walked away, but I do not know them personally. I do know some for whom indulging that shot at romance is on hiatus. A new child, an imminent move, an illness-these big things can tie one’s gardening hands.  I myself am shuddering at the thought that this year I must see to a new roof.  Worse than the expense, the thought of the damage threatening my garden -I don’t know how I will cope.   I can save ahead for the roof,  but I despise the idea of regrowing or replacing my roses, or some boxwood crushed by the three layers of shingles that have to come off and down.  But as I see dealing with this come November, and today is the first day of spring, I choose to think about the possibilities.

Some possibilities involve an investment of time and imagination, and not so much money.  My blocks of limelight hydrangeas were almost seven feet tall when they bloomed last summer.  I barely trimmed them last March; I wanted the height. In August I could see the mass of flowers towering over my yew hedge. It is possible for me to cut them harder, and keep them lower-what would this do?  I prune one client’s hydrangeas to 20 inches tall out of the ground-her  four foot plus plants do not obstruct her view of the lake.  My hydrangeas span a considerable drop in grade; could I prune such that the eventual height of each block will be the same?  Would they be better, two feet shorter?  Would I like to give this a try?

For the past 5 years, I have been pruning a pair of palibin lilacs on standard rather hard after they bloom.  The heads have gotten so large, they are always on the verge of out of bounds.  It has taken every bit of five years to change their shape from a giant ball to lower and wider ovals.  This shape I like better. But those ovals are not uniform all the way around-have I the nerve to pollard them? Pollarding a tree heads back all of its branches breathtakingly close to the primary trunk.  Though I love the look of pollarded trees in European cities and gardens, I am a little faint of heart, subjecting two of my own to this treatment.  They never seem to mind how hard I prune-they flush out again without any complaint.  It is a possibility on my mind, pollarding the lilacs.  In my own garden, pollarded trees like I see in books about European gardens-it would no doubt be a romantic experience.

Though our winter has been very mild this year, my Helleborus Angustifolius survived the mild winter with very little damage-but their giant stems were flattened by the weight of the snow.  As they bloom on last year’s growth, I cannot cut them back.  Shall I trade them in for some orientalis cultivar whose tattered leaves can be pruned off in March, as the flowers push forth from the soil on their own fresh stems?  I have quite a few years invested in these giant hellebores, but they really do not like this climate. Should I decide to cut my losses, is there something else that would compliment my beech ferns even better?

All of the elements of my fountain garden seem to be working well, and growing fine.  But something seems to be missing-what is it?  Do I need a new fence?  Should I stain my old fence black?  Does my fountain need something?  If so, what?  This has to be the most exciting part of the first day of a Michigan spring-what are my possibilities?  As I am only thinking things over, I can let my imagination run wild. My imagination gets a little frayed come September, but a long winter has set me to longing to be out of doors, tinkering.    

Other years, my spring has been much more about repairing winter damage than romance.   One winter, ice and snow brought an entire hedge of 14 foot tall arborvitaes to its knees.  The only possibility at my disposal-have it tied back up, look after it, and hope for the best.  This was three years ago; perhaps this year it will look its old glorious self again. Splayed out and winter burned boxwood took its share of time and effort, as did the cleanup of wind and ice damaged trees.  My spring plans-dashed.   

This winter though, has been very grey, very long, and quite benign. A little romance seems to be right around the corner.

Posted on: March 21, 2010 5 Comments
Filed Under: Spring, Strictly Opinion Tagged With: ,

Sunday Opinion: Success

Though there is nothing revolutionary or even provocative about the idea, I have been thinking about it. That is, that nothing makes for enthusiasm quite like success.  A friend was asking about my very first garden-what exactly was that like?  In 1980, armed with 4000.00 in cash from the sale of my first house in Ferndale, and an 8000.00 loan from my grandmother, I was able to buy a house and 5 acres in Orchard Lake for $60,000.00.  How so?  Though Orchard Lake is a very nice community and five acres is a whomping lot of land, we were in the middle of a recession, and the house in question was a disaster in every way.  The furnace had been installed in a dirt hole under the house-a ladder was required to go take a look at it. The first spring I lived there, said hole flooded; I had no heat at all after April 1. Every other part of the house was on a par with this, or worse.  The house was so bad, I had to get homeowner’s insurance through a state pool of high risk properties. I was 30 years old-what did I know?  All I could see was the property-and the possibilities that property would afford me.  My Mom cried when she saw it-I remember being so annoyed with her.  I had enthusiasm-what else did I need?

I actually needed plenty, and couldn’t afford one thing, once the mortgage and that insurance was paid every month.  We knocked down the garage, whose roof was balanced on unmortared columns of concrete blocks, and disposed of it one truckload at a time.  The hand-excavation for the drive-in garage had left the foundation of the house exposed-an excavating guy said he would bring in 300 yards of sandy dirt, and rough grade it all for 2000.00.  Nana to the rescue, a second time.  I think she had more confidence that I could make this work than my Mom.  She decided up front that if I could not make a go of it, she would bail me out.  She never said so out loud, but I think from the start she insured me against disaster.

But back to my first garden.  I was left with a really roughly graded, unmowably steep slope of a giant size-now what? Most of the gardening I had done to that point was confined to reading and mooning over plant catalogues, and garden books from the library. I had a few beds around the house-a few great plants trying to survive the weedfest. Not having an unlimited budget, I wanted plants that would spread.  Ground covers for sun.  Many sunny groundcovers came under the heading of rock garden plants-so I decided I would have a rock garden.  A sympathetic neighbor with an ancient Ford tractor dragged huge rocks from the property up to the top of the slope, and  turned them loose. Gravity made half the placement decisions, the puffy new soil the other half.  My rocks sank like the stones they were- at least half way into the ground. My first success-each rock looked like it had been there long enough for the earth to come up around it like an opulent stole.

My second success-what dumb luck that the soil that came to me was very sandy, and well drained, as most of the property was intractably heavy clay.  I spent what seemed like a king’s ransom on little spreading plants-but the sheer square footage of the area swallowed them up.  Not having one clue about mulch or weed prevention, I weeded-for years and years- before it filled in. Then I moved into crown growing plants, for a little vertical interest. I had myself a rock garden.  Dianthus, saponaria, aethionema , thymes, species tulips, iris chrysographes, and forrestii-and my favorite-encrusted saxifrage.  I could not get over the fact that the saxifrage leaves were stone-limestone- encrusted. I still can’t. My plants grew, and that success fueled my enthusiasm for more.  When I sold the house fifteen years later, it was actually liveable.  But what I hated leaving behind the most were my gardens. The rock garden was my first on that property,  but not my one and only.

My success had mostly to do with fortuitous accident.  I would never have dug out 1000 square feet of sod for a garden all at one time-not then.  The sheer size of the area of bare dirt forced me to deal with the space as a whole.  I planned little plant villages and neighborhoods. I had an east coast, and a west coast.   I saw where the water ran downhill in a fierce rain, and gravelled those gullies. I planted accordingly. I had a country going on, and it was my job to govern the whole thing. The spots I could see coming up the front walk got my favorites.  On my own, I would have started small, and added on.  What is it about add on’s that they always look added on? The sandy gritty soil-I am sure my excavating person had some he wanted to get rid of, or perhaps it was on special that day. Wherever it came from, my rock plants loved where they lived. 

My best friend Margaret gave me Louise Beebe Wilder’s book “Pleasures and Problems of a Rock Garden” written in 1938;  she had inherited it from her gardener father.  I quote from her chapter “The Steadfast Sedum”:  “No stonecrop, we are given to understand, would have the heart to blast our budding enthusiasms by refusing to live; any soil will suit them, any situation, and they increase at a rate unknown to other rock plants.  Pin our faith to sedums, and avoid despair.”  I took her advice when ever possible.  She wrote about rock gardening with such great enthusiasm.  Phlox subulata, she writes, has “radiant color, rich fragrance, and almost universal amicability”.  Who would not want to grow that? I about wore that book out, as I read for the pleasure of her writing, and I read again for her instruction and encouragement.  I loved the sedums sight unseen-they were going to help me have a garden.

Some thirty years later, I am still interested in this idea of success and enthusiasm.  No one can be enthused about dead or near dead plants. Or a groundcover bed overrun with quack grass.  In some cases, I am unable to intervene; who knows what people do with their plants when I am not looking.  But anyone who wishes to grow a garden, or redo a landscape, or plant some pots, has the ability to help themselves.  Nurseries put tags in their pots of plants; more than likely someone works there who gardens at home.  My very first gardening job was at a place where I bought iris and daylillies by the trunkload. My ideas of a vacation is visiting a nursery.  I am possessed and obsessed by gardening.  Lacking this, trees come with planting instructions. There are books. There is the encyclopedia interneta. Every gardener knows these things; what can be much tougher is figuring out who you are. That will tell you what kind of gardener you might become, should you hope and plan to.  Plan for success, and work hard.  You’ll be a better gardener for it.

Posted on: March 14, 2010 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Garden Stories, Garden Design, Strictly Opinion Tagged With: ,

Sunday Opinion: A Sense of Balance

It should have been the good news of the week-the clearance from my surgeon to retire my training wheels 30 some days after my knee replacement.  But getting up the nerve to actually turn loose of my secure vehicle for a cane has been a tough go.  After 33 days, I had gotten attached to all of its deluxe features.  Four omnidirectional caster wheels that could turn on a dime, locking handbreaks, a comfortable seat should I suddenly get tired, a sizeable storage compartment-the Hugo-mobile enabled me to safely get from one place to another, even if  I faltered.   I could prop my leg up and ice that new knee just about anywhere.  In the early aftermath, it did indeed keep me aloft.  I didn’t go far, but it was always with me. Buck tells me that later that my physical therapist was patiently instructing me to push it along with my fingertips only; I don’t remember hearing that.  He was not nearly so enchanted with it as I-mainly as he’s been hauling it up and down the stairs every day for the past few weeks.  But he has remarkable patience-at least where I am concerned.

Though I understood the words perfectly that the time had come to move on, I was incredulous that anyone would expect me to ditch my great ride for a stick. Sticks were for placing strategically into spring and fall pots, staking wayward perennials, throwing to Milo, picking up after a storm, unstopping a drainage hole in a pot, or drawing bedlines in prepped soil.  How could I expect that a stick half my height, and one tenth of the size of my leg would keep me upright?

My physical therapist-she was on the front line of all this angst.  Considering how she handled it, I am sure I was not the first person to be dubious about putting their faith in a stick.  She explained that an artificial knee is an incredibly strong gizmo whose design and installation procedure would take your breath away.  It is virtually impossible to break. We did not go over the worst case, we went over what I should do if I fell.  Number one, stay down until you assess your problem-no need to panic, and try to leap up.  Leaping up in the wrong way-that can be bigger trouble than a fall.  We practiced. Good advice for a new knee, or a life-don’t you think? If you are wondering how in the world this relates to gardening or gardeners-I will get to that.  But my quick answer-the challenges that life throws at me, I see in personal terms-and I am very personally, a gardener.

Back to my physical therapist-she explained the weak link in the whole constellation of events was the musculature, charged with keeping a knee in place, that had been in decline all the while I fooled around, putting off what would fix an irreparably deteriorated joint. Muscles that don’t get used atrophy, and waste away.  No kidding they were wasted-the ensuing physical therapy designed to target strengthening those muscles made my hair stand on end-and I have a ways to go yet.

My surgeon wants me to sign up for a month of out-patient physical therapy-a more aggressive program.  I can flex to his satisfaction, and I am off any regular tylenol-this is not typical of his knee people at this stage. He told me that in spite of how I have fast tracked a recovery that he feels fine signing off on, he wants me to sign up for a month of more aggressive PT.  Why?

Gardeners need good strength.  A physical plant that hums along.  The ability to back up on a whim.  The ability to stand and work, on uneven ground.  The ability to swoop down and pluck a weed.  The ability to dig a hole-digging a hole is an art, but it is also hard work, is it not?  The ability to get down and see the crocus sieberi face to face.  The ability to drag a hose, lift a three gallon potted shrub, man an edger-the ability to stand on one’s highest tip toes to prune a broken branch.  I will never play squash, or participate in a ballet, but I need knees to garden.

Yesterday Buck put the stick in my hand; let’s try it, he said.  It took only three steps before I left his arm behind. At first I concentrated on the order of events.  Put the stick out there, move the new knee leg up to it, follow up with the knee that is still working-repeat.  Keep going.  I walked through every room and back again.  The stick-I wasn’t leaning and looming over it.  It just gave me a fingertip point of reference.  I could not believe how good it felt, to be moving under my own steam.  That stick-graceful and unobtrusive.  A stick-a small object of considerable strength, grace, and cache; I have a new appreciation.  The Hugo-I am over it.

I think I understand balance in a new way.  As a designer, I realize that symmetrical  compostions have a great and formal strength.  Formally designed spaces are stable and quiet.  I am a bilaterally symmetrical being that has been balanced for a good many decades-this has not changed.  I was meant to be securely upright, and on my feet. I am in fact back on my feet-this feels so good.  I spent the better part of the day, stretching, and relaxing.  The tension of my worry about the integrity of my balance drained away.  I felt so good today!  I never lost the ability to be on my feet-I had lost confidence.  So much for bilateral symmetry-there is another world out there.

I understand that asymmetrical compositions need to address how elements of unequal weight can be balanced-either by placement, or repetition.  Or how any and all design elements make for balance. Some impossibly balanced compositions provide no end of interaction, and interest.  How nature reaches equilibrium, either in ponds, or climax forests-every gardener knows about this. I am confident in saying to said gardeners that if you physically feel off balance by a composition, that composition is no doubt off balance aesthetically.  Are you comfortable looking, or walking through that garden of yours confidently, securely on your feet?  Does any element seem lonely, or too heavy?

No matter what I intellectually bring to any issue,  I respect the natural course of events.  It is my idea that when I am really old, and not gardening anymore, I could make some drawings regarding my impression of the natural course of events. But for the moment, I am back on my feet and moving-good deal.

Posted on: March 7, 2010 4 Comments
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion

Sunday Opinion: Rehab

 You would think agreeing to a knee replacement would be enough for anyone to sign up for, wade through and get up and out of bed in spite of- not so.  A brand new knee joint does not in and of itself constitute a rehabilitated knee.  That titanium gizmo may be a miracle of modern medicine, but it has to settle in, get situated, make friends with the cut and mightily insulted quadriceps muscle-and be persuaded to work. It has to extend the leg in question out straight-all the way out straight.  It has to flex. 90 degrees to climb the stairs-93 degrees to stand up.  106 degrees to tie your shoelaces, 117 to lift things-and 135 degrees to properly take a bath.  As I am fond of taking a tubby, I know what I have to do.  135 degrees of flexion means you can just about do anything you have a mind to.  At this writing, almost four weeks after surgery, I am at 112 degrees. I have a ways to go before I am climbing up into the Sprinter to go to market, and hauling 1 gallon pots around.  Can you hear me sighing?

I have never been all that good at self improvement.  No matter how many times I tell myself I do not need one more book on any garden related topic, new books appear. I buy my books on line now-it is criminally easy to do.  William Stout Books in California is a treasure trove of great books on design and the arts. Just reading about their books on line is great winter entertainment.  Amazon-I should just turn over a paycheck to them at Christmas time.  I buy books-to me, from me.  Powells Books, Timber Press, Hennessey and Ingalls, Potterton Books-my list of places to get in to trouble is long. I am an incorrigible offender.

I cannot walk past a plant that needs water, and direct someone else to take care of it.  Should I go to photograph a client’s summer pots, and they need water, I put the camera down.  If there are plants at my shop flopped over from having gotten too dry, I will drop whatever else I am doing, and water.  If I am really hard pressed for time, I will carry the plant to someone for immediate relief.  Early in our relationship, Buck would watch me come home to dessicated pots.  He would try to reason with me.  With complete and kindly confidence he would assure me that the pots were in no imminent danger: I should put down my things and relax a little before the evening chores.  When I brushed him off,  briefcase in one hand and the hose streaming water in the other, he would roll his eyes, and mutter under his breath.  None of this from him ever rehabilitated me-he gets started on the watering now before I get home.  Peace in our time.

For at least twenty years straight I planted columbines. Who wouldn’t love to have Nora Barlow in their garden?  Aquilegia flabellata alba-gorgeous.  The chartreuse foliaged version whose name I cannot remember-I am sure I have bought at least 50 of them. No matter how many times I told myself to just say no, I kept buying them.  It is very tough to just admit that some living thing just doesn’t like you.  Enroll me in rehab all you want, but I will probably keep buying columbines. 

I am a designer who speaks my mind-sometimes before I know it’s happened. There is no rehabbing this characteristic; I think I have the gene.  I furthermore think I have little interest in being reformed.  But my age is in my favor, whether I like it or not.  Luckily it is much harder to sustain righteous indignation for too long the older one gets. I like to think I am much less rough around the edges. Eleanor Roosevelt once said that that beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. I find this is a good goal, practicing the art of the two way street. My interest in landscapes-designing them, building them, looking after them, is a trump card I will play against my own propensity to get out of hand, should I need to.  Clients are very much a party to what I do; I treat them like company.

I might be willing to consider the notion that one could become rehabilitated via repeated exposure.  How many times have I stretched out, and closed up that leg to the best of my ability since coming home with this new knee? I am sure the number has to be in the zillions.  My efforts today are a little bit better than yesterday, and lots better than four weeks ago. 

 This experience has reminded me of an exchange I had with my Mom forty years ago.  I woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her I could not go back to college and finish.  Who knows what reason I gave her, or why I found it necessary to initiate conversation at 2am.  She simply said that whether I finished what I had started or not, that decision was not going to make any difference in how she lived her life. This included the fact that she was going back to sleep; if I wanted to stay up all night and mull the thing over-fine.  I recollect an instant attitude rehab.  And I did graduate, by the way.

Gardeners are not just gardeners.  They are motivated, driven-impelled by an instinct to make things grow. I like this about them.  Not being able to negotiate the leap up into the Sprinter come spring will affect no one’s life but mine.  Given this, I have taken ownership of this rehab as if it were the best thing I had ever been given.  As for the columbines, I think I will give them another whirl this spring.

Posted on: March 1, 2010 1 Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion