The front garden bordering the house has grown gangly while I have focused on other beds. On the dining room side of the front door there are so many ferns (even though I dug up and gave away plenty this spring,) that I can no longer see the hosta or astilbe.
On my work-room/office side the bed is overrun by lily of the valley; a rose that grew up to be a rambler; bindweed; and bittersweet. That bed is truly what my mother would have called “a mess.” It needs a real makeover, as do the borders at the back of the house, and the bed that borders the back fence with my northern neighbor.
Yesterday, I began deconstructing the work-room-window front garden. I had decided that it is beyond the point where I can just clean it up. It needs a rethink and a reset. The bed has three anchor plants; plants which define its colors and pattern and weave it into the other front beds: at the far corner is an acer, or Japanese maple; in the center is the pruned-back red rose; closest to the front door is a hydrangea macrophylla, or blue, mop-head hydrangea. Those are staying. Everything else is getting dug up, having its roots washed (because they are entwined with roots of grasses and weeds,) and potted or planted on. This is a big job.
Yesterday, I pruned the spent salvia back to the soil. It will regrow and blossom again in a month or so. Salvias are one of my favorite perennials. I love blue flowers, and these have a lovely, sage-y, scent to their flowers and leaves.
I dug out the crowded patch of bearded iris, replanted four tubers, and carted the at least sixty (!!!) others to the back work-area to be cleaned and potted. I dug a beautiful heuchera, or Coral Bells, out from the shade of the hydrangea, replanted half of it where it will get more light and air, and brought the other half back to be repotted. Finally I dug out the roots of one of the big, old, bleeding hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) and divided it and now have twelve potted plants that will not reemerge again until next spring.
First this morning after opening the greenhouse and picking any ripe raspberries, will be to pot up all those bearded iris, set aside one set for a beloved, three more for a garden friend, and get the rest of the plants out to the Free Little Garden Shop. Then, I will clear another couple feet of that front bed.
I lay awake during the wee-hours this morning thinking about all the work I want to get done in all these borders. I came to the conclusion that the gardens, as they are now, and as my life is now, are too much for me to tend in the way I want to tend them. So, I have decided that they all need that reset and rethink. Then, I realized I have been doing just that, though I hadn’t articulated it to myself as such.
The front of the house beds are going to become much simpler in their planting, which will allow me to focus my energy on the perennial beds that get the most sunshine.
The back of the house bed is going to be deconstructed and become a simple, tidy, kitchen garden with five beds for lettuces and annual herbs for use in daily cooking.
The northern border bed is going to become a simple yew hedge which will grow up to provide my northern neighbors (whose back gardens are very manicured) with a screen from my wild and life-full gardens. Plus, yews are hardy, and provide food and shelter for the birds.
My first attention in the gardens will always be the food. I am like my dad in this … the fruit and the vegetables come first because they feed my family. The food takes a lot of time and energy in spring and during harvest. The flower gardens need to support that, and thrive during my time away from them.
I have been watching the political news out of New York City. It heartens me and reminds me (as most things do) of the gardens. Mr. Mamdani is like a gardener working to return to the basics of his particular garden (the City): care of the people, and the systems that support them. He is rethinking the way things are; digging out the weeds; repositioning public-servants and services; and getting things done. It is early days, and so far, I am impressed. May it continue. May it grow. May the city and her people, thrive.
The Mayor is doing what he said he would do, and the citizens of the city are benefitting. They can focus on what needs their attention in their own lives because the person they elected to run the city is doing his job. This is something we do not currently experience nationally.
Nationally, the only things growing are alga in the Reflecting Pool, the national debt, poverty rates for regular citizens, the wealth of the billionaires, unemployment rates, the number of data centers, and bankruptcies. We have been overrun by bittersweet and bindweed.
It is time to put on our garden gloves, imagine and envision better systems for a more perfect union, vote, protest, plant seeds, feed our neighbors, and just get on with the work of being citizens in a participatory democratic republic. May it be so.
Courage my dears. Love one another.
