I have finally resigned myself to the fact that one of my Princeton Gold maples will not recover.  In obvious trouble for the past several years, I tried a number of remedies –  aerating the soil, adding compost, careful watering, soil testing, spraying for fungus-none of this made a dent in its decline.  In the beginning, I believed I could intervene; after all, I have 13 other maples that are thriving. Undeterred by the fact that it could not tell me where it hurt, I was sure I could, and would, figure it out.  In time, this belief that I could set all to right turned to exasperation; nothing was working.  When it was clear my homeowner efforts were going no where, I asked Westside Forestry to step in; surely they could fix the problem.  All of Tim’s years of experience as an arborist proved as irrelevant as my insistent belief that this tree would grow for me. I will admit that at one point I walked up to this tree, and gave it a swift kick in the trunk; my exasperation had turned to hopping mad.  A stand of beech ferns and helleborus angustifolia that had taken every bit of six years to get good would be laid to waste getting that tree out of the ground. Finally resigned to my failure, I have a replacement tree, ready to plant.  Not that I could stand to be there and watch when the exchange is made; I do not have that kind of grace in the face of defeat.

In retrospect, I think what proved to be the downfall of this tree was a constellation of events.  Not this disease, or that bug, but lots of smaller problems which in the end, in concert, proved overwhelming.  Perhaps the rootball was damaged at planting, and maybe it was planted a little too high.  Perhaps the extra water, and the mulch I put over the ball,  hoping to compensate for that too high planting, rotted roots.  Like a daily interest rate, my mistakes started compounding.  Pruning the top branches away from the electric line perhaps exposed the trunk to sun scald, and a stressed tree to yet more insult.  Lots of little things have a way of picking up speed, volume, and mass; the resulting bits of trouble get to be an event with a life of its own. 

Watching my garden fall down around me in high winds, or my cedars flattened by ice, or my hostas riddled with hail bullets-this kind of trouble is every day, ordinary garden trouble, over which I have no control, and eventually get over.  When I gloss over or ignore a problem as if it will resolve on its own-this is trouble that belongs to me.  I am lucky that the plants in my garden have an innate will to live; more than just a few suffer my bad moves, and survive in spite of me.  This why I so treasure anything that volunteers in my garden.  They get it right from the beginning.  A seed will not germinate until all the conditions it needs to survive are in place.  A favorable constellation of events makes for better than even odds that the seed will survive its most vulnerable moment.  Seeds are coated in all manner of armor, designed to preserve its viability until conditions are friendly to opening the door, and venturing forth. Such is my fondness and respect for the volunteers in my garden; they are programmed to stay dormant until all the stars are in proper alignment-no exceptions.  Then they grow for broke.   The nicotiana I grow from seed are always stretched, pallid in color, and hesitant to grow. The wrong choice of soil, the wrong light, the wrong temperature, the wrong water-all of these little things I either ignore or respond too late to, make for horticultural disaster.  There have been more than a few times I have deserved a ticket with at least 3 points attached, and a stiff fine. The nicotiana that self sows in the expansion joints of my sidewalk grows lustily, free of my poor excuse for care or erroneous assumptions about what constitutes nurturing.

I had a lengthy discussion with a client of the shop this week, over an antique Victorian era urn she had purchased over a year ago.  She said she had never been able to get anything to grow in it. Given that the urn had not ever provided her with a successful planting, much less any fun, she wanted to return or exchange it for another container.  Her assertion that the container was responsible for her lack of success left me speechless-where on earth could that idea be coming from?  She went on to tell me that she was not an expert gardener; she simply went to the nursery, she bought whatever appealed to her, and planted her pots.  This approach, which did not include pairing shade plants with pots in the shade, and sun loving plants in containers placed in sunny locations, had always worked for her. The urn, situated close to the north facing wall of her home, was refusing to grow her a good stand of petunias.  The combination of her naivete and arrogance took my breath away;  I kept digging.

She finally admitted to noticing that the soil in the pot was always boggy.  Victorian urns were frequently made with a bottom reservoir to hold drainage water well away from the roots in the soil. Slits in the sides of bottom bowl would permit water to escape, once it reached the overflow level.  As this is not a particularly efficient or thorough way to drain soil; Rob had drilled a hole in the bottom.  I asked what material she was using for drainage.  After a quizzical look, she told me the urn was too shallow to permit any drainage material; the urn was filled bottom to top with soil. Her decision to skip the drainage material-deadly.  There was no placating her with information.  She had no interest in hearing that annual plants do not root deeply, nor did she believe that petunias would not tolerate heavy shade and water logged soil. She brushed off my discussion of conditions as though none of that applied to her. I finally told her she bought an urn from my shop, not an urn programmed and magically endowed by me with all the gardening skills necessary to make something grow beautifully. I told her I would not take the urn back, but that I would coach her in the spring about soil, drainage material and plant selection. This was not so much the outcome she expected or wanted, but I could tell she couldn’t help but think about it.  We’ll see if she takes ownership of her own trouble, and comes back in the spring. 

I have on occasion been so like her.  But I have every opportunity to be a better gardener come tomorrow- should I decide to take that on.

Margaret Dickson may have been the most gifted gardener I have ever had the privilege to know.  Of Scandinavian descent, she was a woman of few words and much energy.  As far as I could see, no plant was unwilling to grow and prosper for her. Not a square foot of bare soil existed in her vast wildflower garden. She had no specimens of Arisaema Sikokianum, Trillium Cernuum, hepatica triloba or sanguinaria canadensis f. multiplex.    She grew sprawling colonies of Stinking Benjamin,, stands of rare Jack-In-The-Pulpits, lush carpets of liverwort and  densely populated communities of double bloodroot. There were more than a few groups that I did not recognize, had never seen, and have never seen since.  She had no interest in names and nomenclature. Gardening with her much much akin to watching my Aunt cook-no recipe, no weighing, no measuring, no checking the clock.  Margaret had some innate and instinctive ability to look at a plant, know what it needed, and plant it correctly.  She knew when to stand back, and let nature take its course.Her garden told the tale; she grew lush hedges of Japanese painted ferns every inch of 24 inches tall.  Her pipsqueak starts of Varder Valley boxwood matured with lightening speed. Plants I was certain were not hardy, grew in her garden like it was a planet unto itself.  No doubt many years of gardening and more gardening had funded her with a knowledge that transcended language.

Though my Mom saw to providing me with my own wholly owned ground, some rudimentary tools and lots of encouragement at a very early age, my gardening future took a turn when I was 14.  The Daniel H. Fletcher Memorial Scholarship to the Grosse Pointe University School landed me in a ninth grade latin class.  I had no concept of the benefits of a classical education, and even less interest. That first day, I remember being told a string of words I could not pronounce nor comprehend translated as “All of Gaul is divided into two parts”.  There could not have been more than 15 kids in this class-there would be no refuge from what promised to be the most useless, dry and unsatisfying way to spend time ever devised by an adult. And anyway,where was Gaul? I was astonished at how unsympathetic my parents proved to be; children have a properly dubious view of adults.  I was sure they were all nuts about insisting that I have a command of another language.

I was never good at translating Latin, so I hated it.  My translations were always rife with errors, as my teacher was happy to note, every day, if necessary.  After no small amount of pleading, I was allowed to transfer into Mrs. Renaud’s first year French class.  Any student of whom she asked a question, in French of course, was required to stand to answer.  If you did not answer correctly, you had to remain standing until you answered successfully.  After spending the better part of that hour on my feet for what seemed like a month, I finally decided maybe the Latin wasn’t so bad after all.  At least if I were to suffer the indignity of poor public performance, why not do it in the comfort of my own seat?  I stayed with that teacher, and that language throughout high school; we both stoically endured my mediocrity.  I went on to study classical languages further in college; I fulfilled my language study requirement studying Greek one on one with Dr. Poggi.  He proved to be very good natured about my lack of insight or gift; he pushed me, and I slogged through it.

In my late twenties, an inexplicable interest in growing orchids surfaced.  I liked the idea that I could hang them in my trees in my North Carolina front yard; their shapes and colors were strange and mesmerizing.  I began to read, and much to my amazement, I had no trouble with the reading, no matter how technical. Horticultural nomenclature, or a system for the naming of plants, devised by Carl Linneaus in the 18th century, was a breeze for me.  Though no one speaks Latin, the derivation of words in many modern languages comes from that Latin, or the Greek.  The Latin all made sense to me, for the first time.  The name of a plant can tell you plenty about its habit, its shape, its origin, or possibly its color or texture.  The formal language of horticulture does help me to grow things, as I do not have the gift that Margaret had.  Most certainly it enables me to communicate precisely and specifically with growers and nursery people, not to mention other gardeners.

Once my infatuation with orchids waned, my interest in garden plants came to the fore.  I would say my entire early plant education came from reading the White Flower Farms catalogues over and over again. The nursery was founded in the 1940’s by Jane Grant and William Harris, writers turned nurserymen; the business was sold to Eliot Wadsworth in 1976.  So charmingly and enthusiastically written under the pen name of Amos Pettingill, those catalogues made me want to grow plants. Better yet, he made learning the latin names easy.  Even today I am amazed at the wealth of information, coaching and inspiration those catalogues provided me at a time when I had little money to allocate to buying plants. My first Rosa Rubrifolia and Paeonia Tenuifolia  came from them.  I would not be one bit surprised to learn they are still thriving.

Among other things, Margaret taught me to fear no plant, and plant freely. Her life was cut way too short by an illness she could not stop from growing. I took care of her gardens now and then when she was too ill to leave her upstairs bedroom.  I would go and see her afterwards; she would invariably fuss that she had seen from her window a  goose in her garden.  I always promised I would be sure to chase it way, and repair any damage.  It was after all, her garden. I did what I could, but I could not do how she did. Margaret’s gift to me was no different than the gift she gave to her garden. She taught me that more important than my knowledge of the language of horticulture is my understanding that each gardener has a way of making things work that is all their own. She taught me to be confident to go my own way.  Nurseries always provide plant care tags that will tell you the name of the plant you are buying.  Lacking that, the vast and comprehensive resource that is the internet can give you just about any information you think you need.  But the physical process and experience of gardening is so interesting and such fun I hope to never get over it.  How could I communicate that I am compelled to grow?  I would show you my garden.

No doubt I spend much too much time mourning the passing of the summer season. I am too slow to fish out my boots and jacket; I obssess about the last rose of summer to Buck ad nauseum. The cold irritates me to no end.  In much the same vein, a client remarked the other day that nothing was going on in her garden anymore-it was over.  We spent some time commiserating about all the things that were wrong with the weather. Too cold, too rainy, too windy, too dark-neither of us were liking one thing about it.  Towards the end of this exchange, the humor of it finally came to our rescue-we got to laughing. In spite of our whining and sulking, nothing has come to an end-it is changing.

 Though  the last time I had a big zest for change was probably 45 years ago, I thrive on big fluid situations. The most succinct definition of the state of being in business I have ever read came from Vera Wang;  “being in business is like keeping 300 marbles on a table all at once”.  I might add that while in the process of keeping all those marbles from dropping off, one needs to regularly add new marbles to the existing mix. Getting over one’s grief about the marble that has in fact dropped off is equally as important; taking your eye off the rest of the balls for too long comes to no good end.  I don’t see that the process of living a life, working a job, or growing a garden asks for any different. I have been watching the starch go out of the massive leaves of my Sum and Substance hostas for 10 days now.  The chartreuse leaves loose chlorophyll and turn yellow; the softened stems finally give in to gravity, and bend.  Those stiff puckered leaves droop to the ground as if they were melting. They are melting. In short order, should I not remove them, they will completely collapse in a gooey heap and decompose.   I must be moving on into the new season; this morning the drama of all that drooping made me laugh.

The prime mover in all of these changes is of course the weather.  The day length is shortening. The day and night temperatures drop. Wind, rain and fog deliver the message that the season is in transition.  There comes a day in every gardener’s life when the the light finally comes on-that day when you understand to the bone that the garden is outside. As in, outside of your control. It may take a powerful storm, or a sudden frost, or a thaw in January that forces water back up under your shingles and into the kitchen for that thought to take hold.  In my case, a visit to the vast conservatory at Longwood Gardens marked the day when I really understood that most of what goes on in the landscape is not at my direction. The giant vaulted glass roof of the vast exhibition hall excludes all the weather except for the light or lack thereof of the sun.  In the working sections of the conservatory, plants being grown for seasonal display are grown under lights; natural light would interfere too much with the production schedule.  The fall chrysanthemums and holiday pointsettias have a staging date already set. There is an enormous amount of time and effort expended to control every aspect of plant culture; in return, this space is as close to perfectly green as can be, all year round.  I was struck as if by lightening; this is not a garden.  It is a grand effort which has produced a reasonable facsimile of a garden.

This is exactly why I feel that good landscape design deliberately celebrates the daily action that we call weather. There is no such thing as a day off from weather; by my calculation, I have lived with daily weather some 21,535 days.  This in and of itself is not so remarkable. That every day the weather is in some way changing, and certainly different than the day before – extraordinary. As a result, every place in my garden there is something new to look at. At this moment, the asparagus going gold yellow, the fallen leaves randomly dotting my lawn, the alyssum volunteers blooming in the gravel walk, the fresh foliage thrown by the grape hyacinths, the hellebores setting buds and the dogwoods fruiting-there is plenty going on. I have my branches back; the structure of which is different from tree to tree, and shrub to shrub.  The bare branches are every bit as interesting and beautiful as branches in leaf. The slanting October light on the branches-gorgeous. A days rain waters my freshly planted tulip bulbs in; I so look forward to the ritual of the putting away of the hoses. A storm coat, a pair of muck boots, and my mud gloves are all that it takes to get me out there. I am able to put away the spade and the trowel in favor of the experiential tools I have on me all the time. I can smell the coming of the cold.  I can see the geese migrating. I can hear the rain on the roof and the wind blowing just fine from inside; I can walk outside should I wish to turn up the volume. I can keep my hands in my pockets.  But no matter what I should decide to do or not do in my garden, there is always plenty going on.