Gardening doesn’t have to be a horticultural challenge; it can be as much the trip as a Sisyphean list of chores.
This seasoned gardener was raised by older women, all of whom had “been there, done that” and by the time I came along they were settled into routines that satisfied them for reasons more of the heart, mind, and a bit of sunshine than to fill a freezer or get yard of the month. They saw their gardens as more journey than destination.
These women could not have been more different. My country grandmother had a simple approach to her one flower bed that was mostly a few clumps of striped liriope, a cherished concrete chicken, and tall zinnias for summer color and butterflies. That was it, except for a pot of snake plant/mother-in-law tongue (Sansevieria) she kept by the TV in a pot wrapped in used kitchen tin foil just for looks. She wasn’t bothered by comments from the others, because she just minded her own business.
My garden clubber grandmother had three books of ribbons for her African violets, hybrid daylilies, and floral designs, all testaments to her attention to detail and pride in workmanship. She was eager to share cuttings and divisions with anyone and taught me to be nicer than I sometimes wanted to be.
My great-grandmother, in spite of being the horticultural chair of her garden club, wasn’t highly social, mostly keeping to herself in a paradise of wildflowers, unusual fruit plants, and hundreds of daffodils in short, labeled rows. She gave lectures all over on growing herbs and wildflowers and preserving food from the garden.
She pooh-poohed acclamation, pointing out that if you want a blue ribbon, it isn’t so much what you know or how you do it, the way to win is to figure out ahead of time what the judges expect, then jump through those hoops. I helped her divide dozens of different daffodils, and she taught me what kinds of butterflies each different caterpillar on her wildflowers would change into.
Contrast these women with my horticulture professors who were mostly about proficient crop production, with all that entails. I learned to do things differently from my upbringing. Instead of a mow-what-grows lawn full of low-growing wildflowers, butterflies, and bees, I learned to fertilize, irrigate, mow at the correct heights for different types of turfgrasses, and use chemical herbicides for a monocrop lawn. Both looked great, just different. One was more time-and energy consumptive, the other I could get done easily and move onto more interesting things.
Another easy contrast is with how I compost stuff. To right-brained efficiency experts it involves shredded particle sizes, the right carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, bioactivating by inoculating a fresh batch with old compost, moisture control, regular mixing and aerating. But at home I make all the compost I can use by simply piling leaves, garden trimmings, and kitchen scraps on one end of a knee-deep row against a fence and then digging finished compost out of the far end. They both work; it’s just a matter of time and motion inputs.
Despite training in floral design by a world-class professor, I just stick common flowers in whatever vase or glass bottle I can find. Every week of the year.
So, while I can make peoples’ ears bleed with horticultural esoterica and guide them towards having a perfect lawn or fast compost or doing the line/mass/filler thing with floral designs, I don’t do it at home.
Relax, breathe in, breathe out. Horticulture has important rewards; but gardening for fun is the journey itself. Regardless of outcomes.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
