You know how some people are fussy eaters? The ones you hesitate to invite to your table because you’ll end up making three dinners instead of one?
Well, I’m learning that plants are worse, much worse. At least some are. Very picky. Very.
As a neophyte gardener, for that is essentially how I must describe myself, various small container gardens and deer-bespoiled yards not withstanding, I’m perched on uncertain ground, my sand-rich tabula rasa spread out before me like a field of dreams.
I’ve begun the long process of transformation. In the words of ancient seers, “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.”*
In one case, that of a certain begonia, well, His Majesty requires 3-6 hours of a.m. sun, and then part shade in the afternoon. And please, no water until the top 1 inch of soil is dry. And then, specifically, I must add fertilizer once a month.
Another, Miss Rose of Sharon, could care less about that. She’s happy facing the back wall, angling her face toward the afternoon sun, catching rays and the occasional drop of water. But even she needs fertilizer about every six weeks, and it must be the type that’s slow release.
I’m beginning to worry. And with good reason.
What do you do when you have hundreds of plants under your care, lolling in your garden???? Now, I must clarify something. My garden is not there yet. As it is now, it could stand in for a sandlot baseball diamond or try out for a part in a lowdown B beach movie. Sand is indeed the word. I’ll be shifting and sifting it like cake flour from one side, near the fence, to the dip in the middle for some time to come.
In the early morning, a fine time to contemplate the future of this rather barren landscape, I turn to the work of Irish landscape designer Mary Reynolds. Most likely I will not include a mini Stonehenge or Carnac stones in my Florida garden. But a plastic flamingo, perhaps. But most likely not.
Ms. Reynolds’s most recent book – The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves (2016) – fits right into the slot that is my little spot of earth. Her guidance should bring me to a more comfortable state of mind.
Yet, I fret. I ask myself, when happens when most of this sand lies under thriving – hopefully – dwarf mondo grass? Should I create a database just to keep track of the dietary requirements of each type of plant I lower into the earth? Every single plant that I buy at the nursery comes with feeding instructions.
In dreaming of a lush garden, I never dreamed I’d be – for all practical purposes – a nursemaid.
That leads me to a new new realization of what it is to be a gardener. To be a gardener, it seems to me, is not unlike being a cook. It is a calling that nourishes in much the same way. To be a gardener, or a cook, is to be a sort of steward. For, as Mary Reynolds says far better could I, “”We are only guardians of these portions of land we call our gardens. We do not and cannot truly own them. Our bodies are made of the Earth and return to it eventually, but the land will always remain alive.” (p. 19, The Garden Awakening)
* Isaiah 35:1
© 2017 C. Bertelsen