FLOWER GARDENING
Before the seed there comes the thought
of bloom,
Not sun, not soil alone can bring to border
This rush of beauty and this sense of order
Flowers respond to something in the gardener’s face –
Some secret in the heart, some special grace.
Yours were the rains that made the roses grow,
And that is why I love your garden so.
These lines were written by E. B. White about his wife’s garden in 1961. They sum up the almost mystical awe that we bring to gardening. I spend hours over garden books from the library and catalogues to try and figure out what combinations will create beauty.
I have come to gardening rather late. My mother had lovely perennials when she was younger and my mother-in-law loved flowers and proudly showed visitors around her garden. I never seemed to find time to have many flowers while the children were at home. The peonies and hydrangeas bloomed in their season. They were here in the yard when we moved to this house. Somehow children’s activities and a dog had higher priority. Then, we traveled. A year away from a garden can be disastrous. The year we came back from China, the vegetable garden was full of thistles just ready to blow. We are fighting them yet.
I started modestly with an island of flowers, a rock garden, just outside our dining room windows. It was enhanced by two large boulders that were brought by a friend of ours, Kent Chidester. He “rescued’ them from a neighbor who was laying tile and came across them.
Now began the search for sun-loving plants, mostly perennials, that liked that location. I try hard to keep the tall growing plants toward the back of the garden. A tall mint, Russian sage and some monardas provide color there in July . Now in May, we enjoy large bleeding hearts, some pinks, and coral bells. The blue flowers of flax are pleasing with various pansies and violas. I carefully fertilize and weed around a small Siberian iris which I have had for four years and have not yet seen bloom. Later there will be phlox, campanulas, and balloon flowers, and chrysanthemums.
Sometimes there is too much success. I bought one plant, a Mexican primrose, which had lovely pink flowers. The next year, several more plants appeared nearby. The third year they had spread throughout the rock garden, threatening to make the entire foreground one kind of flower only. I liked it too much to get rid of it completely, so I created, with Percy’s help, a raised bed in another location and took the bottom out of two old dresser drawers and placed them across the front of the new bed. Now I have them boxed in, I hope, along with an equally aggressive but attractive variegated leaf mint.
Now you can see clearly the other danger in flower gardening. The gardening space continually expands if the gardener doesn’t exercise discipline. I often share plants with other gardeners and have been given many plants and bulbs. When crowded perennials are dug up, there are always extra plants. Gardening space must be limited to the gardeners’ energy and enthusiasm.
The next gardening puzzle led to a large expansion which I find very satisfying. I was given a start of Bethlehem sage and each time I tried it in a new location, it looked sick and unhappy by the middle of the summer, too much sun, apparently. We prepared for a shade garden which would be ready for planting the following year. First we dug up the area along a row of shrubs and under an oak tree. Then I put down newspaper and mulch, a garden in waiting. The next year I planted the Bethlehem sage, some ferns, some columbines, and crane’s bill geraniums. A few foxgloves are doing nicely in the background. This area is now so pleasant that we put a cedar swing in the middle of the border as a way station for weary gardeners away from the house.
Orange poppies with the sun behind them are another lovely sight and they defend their turf very well requiring little weeding or care. I have encouraged Shasta daisies to grow next to them. The white is a nice contrast to their brilliant orange.
In the small bed in front of the house we had fun with a new bulb, a fritillaria . The bulbs smell like a skunk so no underground critters like them. They grow about three feet tall with a crown of leaves. Under the leaves are a circle of rust colored bells which hang down. Now Percy’s pride and joy, two clusters of small ladyslippers are blooming. He got a start of them from his brother in West Virginia.
Whatever the season from the earliest snowdrops until the last chrysanthemum is killed by the frost, we enjoy our flower gardens and look forward to each new season’s bloom.
– Mary