About a year ago, our neighbor, Jim, died peacefully after a 94-year happy life. We decided to buy the house for several reasons. First, it gave us a place for our family to stay when they visit and a future plan in case any of our parents need to live near us toward the ends of their lives. Second, and maybe a little more, we wanted the extra garden space. Between the two lots, we have a half-acre utopia in the middle of an otherwise urban environment.
Among the first tasks when we closed the sale was to tear out the fence between the two properties and clear out the brush around the whole perimeter so we could appreciate our newly joined property and start to make a plan for how the new garden would integrate with my existing beds. The year was going by quickly, so we decided the labor was something we could contract out, and we called a landscape company to come to give us an estimate. What I would come to learn is that there is a difference between landscapers and gardeners, and the distinction can come at a great cost.
During the landscape company owner’s first visit, I explained our goals and that we were really only concerned about the fence line and the brush. He walked briskly through my yard and talked over me about what he was going to cut down in the beds and what bushes he was going to trim and I found myself having to run behind him to tell him what plants still needed to go to seed to come back in the spring and that he really didn’t need to worry about the beds. I just needed him to focus on the fence line. But this focused landscaper had a very particular idea in his head about what a good landscape should look like. It didn’t leave a lot of room for variation. Finally, I suggested that we write it all down and map it out so his crew doesn’t cut anything out that I don’t want to lose. He said he would come back with his foreman before the rest of the crew comes and we could go over it.
In the end, it didn’t matter what we talked about, or what we said during the visit with the foreman, because they saw everything as black and white, with a clear set of rules, and anything they couldn’t identify was dug up and mulched over. I lost all my lilacs, several other perennials, and a bunch of self-seeding annuals before I noticed what they were doing and made them leave.
A real gardener recognizes the diversity of their plants. They don’t mow everything down in an attempt to meet some standard set by society. That is black-and-white thinking and doesn’t apply here. Instead, they tend to the qualities that make each plant unique and help them thrive so that the whole garden benefits. What looks like a weed to some people is a beautiful prairie flower to someone who has grown it from seed.
You don’t have to be a gardener. Sometimes you only have time to mulch your beds and trim your bushes and call it a day. Or it is too complicated to figure out which flowers are good and which ones are weeds, so it is better for you, personally, to have none of them. But you can play an important role by celebrating the people who love all of their varied flowers, too, and to give them space to help their flowers flourish.
Yours in the tending,
John Johns, Music Director