I’m not any kind of accomplished gardener. I let things grow too much. Sometimes I learn about some plant’s light or heat requirements by messing it up and eventually plopping it into the green can, destined to become mulch or whatnot.
But I love it. I’ve learned significantly since my first baby steps back in the fall of 2015 when I bought this house and all the flora that came with it. In fact, it was something of a trial by fire since said flora wasn’t in all that good of shape. The roses, in particular, weren’t healthy — and even I, in my ignorance, could recognize that they would be needing some attention. At the time, however, just the act of deadheading was about all I could handle. It felt kind of like being Morticia Addams, clipping away at those leftover blobs that had been rose blooms just a few days before.
Eventually I learned, from an experienced hand with roses, that ‘you can’t cut them too much.’ In other words, they really need plenty of pruning. I began picking up on that. I’m still inclined to let them grow long antennae-like canes, partly because I know that they need to reach the best light in my considerably shady back yard, but also because I can’t bear the idea of pruning a rose cane if I can see that there’s a bud forming at the tip. I’ll wait until after it has produced a bloom.
I learned about shade versus sun the hard way, by putting a newly-planted pot of impatiens on the deck railing, where the sunlight is constant and intense during the summer. The impatiens were destroyed within half a day and I had learned my lesson. I read up on them and found that they are, of course, shade flowers for whom direct sunlight is downright toxic. I tried again, this time placing the impatiens underneath the ficus trees that are largely responsible for my back yard being so shady. And they flourished. To this day I fill the area underneath two of the ficus trees with a billowing chorus of impatiens.
I got some books. I watched some videos. Mostly I just practiced and lamented my failures while celebrating my successes. Not long ago I found out that canna lilies — they’re really a kind of iris — really love major sunlight. I put a distinctly retiring canna lily in a larger pot and placed it smack dab out on the patio where it gets direct sunlight most of the day. And it went nuts, quadrupling in height and sending out a veritable thicket of canes with bright golden blooms hither and yon. Aha, I thought. Canna lilies like sunlight. That barely-there canna lily is now the monarch of the back yard. So it goes.
What has made me a good, if not expert, gardener is that I understand the patience involved. I’m a teacher, after all, and teaching is all about patience and waiting for results. Thus I’m not about to jump to hasty conclusions about the health or prospects of a particular plant. I’m also accustomed to doing research so I’m quite willing to look around for solutions to particular problems. (That’s how I learned about the way overly alkaline soil can really screw up a lot of plants since it interferes with their ability to process iron for making chlorophyll. An iron-and-acid liquid compound from my local Ace Hardware sets that right in a jiffy.)
We don’t have extreme seasons here in Brentwood, out on the eastern edge of the SF Bay Area. Fall lingers on through November and the winter is incredibly mild; no snow, hardly ever freezing temperatures. Hopefully plenty of rain. The spring gets started around late February. By late April it’s summer. At no time do I have to protect anything from the winter frosts. I still cut the roses down to short, bare canes every December because they really need it. I have a big plumbago on the deck that I also trim down to practically nothing since it, like the roses, needs it. I chuck most of the impatiens and begonias and start over in late April. So there’s definitely a feeling of renewal and change. And every year I seem to add more.
This year it occurred to me that I was overdoing it. Just too many plants everywhere. I’m mostly a pots guy, rather than planting in the ground. My soil isn’t so good — mostly clay — and the long strip of soil underneath the ficus trees is threaded through with tree roots. So I’ve found that large planters work better on the whole. It also makes for moving things around possible. However, the flip side is that it encourages me to pick up just a few more of those cool looking whatchamacallits and thingamabobs at the garden store and worry later about where I’m going to put them. So I wind up with too much. But I don’t mind. Flowers are pretty, and I can take the extra time to stroll about with hose and sprayer.
Most importantly, though, is that it creates a space with lots of character. It’s definitely my garden; there’s nothing whatsoever of the designer about it. I’ve put things hither and yon and never hesitated to crowd things together. Thus it expresses my happiness in home. And my continued love for experimentation and growth. And my determination not to let myself get old and static before my time.