Landscaping

Landscaping

      If you're reading this then you've done at least a little landscaping.

      You've decided to put that plant there and the other one over there. Someone else might not do it that way. Your garden isn't exactly your image of the garden of your dreams, but it's a step in that direction and next year it will look even better than this year.

      If you have the money, would you consider calling in a professional landscaper and have them do it all for you? If the point of a yard is to look good for parties and avoid HOA complaints then that's a good solution.

      Do you enjoy playing the piano? You could hire the local piano teacher to come play for you, instead. Do you like knitting? You could pay the knitting shop owner to knit for you and then you wouldn't have to. But that misses the point.

      If ever there was a perfect example of the old line about how happiness is the journey and not the destination then gardening is it. I once read that a garden is never finished. There are new azaleas to enjoy from our local hybridizers, ferns to move that got too big for their surroundings, great experiments to dig out that failed to perform as the catalogs advertised and new collections of colors to enlarge the pallet. It's never finished (unlike the landscaper who, at some predetermined point, IS finished).

      We're gardening because we WANT to garden. The process of enjoying gardening is the goal and even tiny gardens with limited budgets provide that.

      We come home from work after dark and don't have the time or energy to get out into the yard (though I do have a friend who digs holes and mixes dirt under spotlights). The items on our checklist become more numerous. That's why our gardens don't resemble the National Arboretum. And Barbara Bullock of the NA would quickly tell you that they, too, could use more help, funding and time.

      What does MY yard look like? Wave your arms to brush away the cloud of mosquitoes and take a look: over there are all the plants in pots yet to be crowded into a bed (some with roots escaping through the drain holes and becoming feral). Just behind that is a huge mulch pile which, after 5 years, will become the world's best compost. Empty pots are lying over by the fence because the shed needs space for tools.

      I once heard the line “If you're not killing plants then you're not trying!” We don't know if the new plant we just bought will survive and thrive in the micro-climate by the fence, and if not then maybe it would if we put it over in the shade by that tree. It's fun to try and REALLY fun when it succeeds!

      Beyond the idea of dropping a nice plant in the ground, there's the question of beds. Should they have straight sides or curves? Should there be a lot of small ones or a few large ones? A mixture? Raised or on the level with the surface? Bordered by stones, railroad ties or just overflowing with mulch? Or even a rock garden with slivers of soil between the stones of the pile, the dirt almost apologetic for being there?

      And what's in the beds? A variety of genus' or all one species? Plants from the same hybridizer or multiple people? The same flower color? The same bloom time? The same funny names (the “Striptease” series if you're into hosta, the “Confederate” series if deciduous azaleas are your thing)?

My beds have a variety of themes: azaleas in a bed all bloom at the same time, herbaceous beds are a mixture of textures, heights and colors. Bulb beds are of a type: crocus, daffodil or daylily, which also all bloom at the same time. I give myself good reasons for my choices but I'm not sure that those reasons would survive intense scrutiny.

      People like to construct things. Some will build boats or planes in their basements, knowing that the finished product will be trapped forever. It's fun building them, anyway. Some knit large projects, some draw complex pictures, some write garden essays (the least defensible craft...).

      Building a garden is so satisfying that language is inadequate to describe the feeling. And yet we're trapped communicating in that poor medium. Maybe someday when we all have computer jacks in our heads the feeling WILL be transferable. Until then, we'll just have to do it to feel it.

Pay a landscaper to do it for me? I'll be one with the compost pile before I let that happen!