Garden Theory

Big rains followed by big sun and noticeably higher temperatures put me on hands and knees in the garden for longer than I can actually tolerate, given my advanced age. But so satisfying. This is the best season for northwestern gardens, many of which are cottage gardens. Probably an even split, in fact, between cottage gardens and more planned arrangements. I am on the side of cottage gardens with their more or less random arrangement and selection of plants.

Furthermore, I am in favor of planting things that are already growing. Nurseries, of which we have a smallish one in Point Roberts, seem to me too often to stock things that you see in magazines rather than things you see actually growing in the gardens around you. I go to the nursery and look at all these beautiful plants and, as experience has taught me, they are not plants that are going to survive in my garden. The plants that survive in my garden are already growing there. So each fall, I dutifully take seeds or stems or excess roots from everything that has bloomed successfully and plant those seeds and stems and roots somewhere else in the yard, and, come spring, I see where else they would like to grow.

Behind all this is some thrift-inspired theory that a garden is not something you spend money on. You garden with what you've got. In my mind's garden (and pretty much in my actual visible garden (see picture at very top), you don't buy dirt, you don't buy fertilizer, you don't buy plants, you don't buy insecticides. You do buy tools, but only sturdy and simple ones. You don't buy dirt because you already have dirt; you don't buy fertilizer because you make compost; you don't buy plants because you gather seeds from previous successes and you may also accept seeds from your friends' previous successes. Any successful plant that multiplies by other methods is also much desired and welcome. My friend Rose gave me about 50 tiny crocosmia bulbs a few years back. Crocosmia seems to need to be divided about every three years. Where there was a clump of ten, now there are a hundred. I must have a thousand crocosmia plants about the grounds. Next year, 2,000. You don't buy insecticides because you are planting things that insects haven't much interest in. That's part of the successful plant definition.

Having a dramatically successful garden if you buy plants, fertilizer, insecticides, and special dirt is sort of cheating, it seems to me. It's like having a garden with sun: any fool can grow a garden with expensive plants, dirt, fertilizer, insecticides, and sun. The challenge is in doing it with nothing special including, in my garden, very little sun. (If you happen to have sun, you can make use of it because you don't have to pay extra to have sun, in my experience, and indeed, paying extra will not get you sun.) Because of those constraints, some things just don't happen in my yard: marigolds, zinnias, anything that slugs have a long-term penchant for (which puts pansies on the NO list), gladiolus (alas), and roses. Instead, I grow rose campion, feverfew, lunaria, alyssum, evening primrose, crocosmia, iris, columbine, foxglove, calendula, Queen Anne's lace (definitely not just a roadside weed), poppies of three kinds (pink, orange, and yellow), ajuga, lilies of the valley, alpine primrose, creeping jenny, hydrangea, forsythia, lupine, and candytuft. Next year, more of the same.

Today, I transplanted 4 dozen columbine seedlings; tomorrow there will be 3 dozen lilies of the valley where today they were not. Saturday, many, many tiny alyssum will be in a new home, as well as a dozen or so lupine seedlings. There is always something that is excess coming up somewhere, waiting to be moved to someplace else.

That is my theory of the garden. In all honesty, however, I must note that the theory also allows me to buy four or five dozen extraordinary tulip bulbs every fall from the Skagit Valley farms down the road in Washington, where every spring they show off their wares at the eponymously-named Tulip Festival. That expenditure falls under the category of 'Exceptions.'