Between the overwhelming march forward of spring growth and the unbounded energy of a puppy examining every plant in our garden, this season seems like a time to take things in and evaluate them. Gardening is really a matter of math, initially addition and subtraction, but eventually multiplication and division. But given that Henry is new to math (although quite aware that if I put four treats in my pocket and give him three, I still have one more to offer), I will focus on addition and subtraction.
When creating a garden, every garden design book tells us to use graph paper to measure our garden out and to plot the plants within it, and to stick to our plan once it is on paper. This advice and these drawings are also at the center of every garden design class I have ever taken. But as I get older, my approach has evolved and garden design happens much more on the ground than on a piece of graph paper. I have come to see gardening as largely taking the next right action with what is in front of me, and this year my next right actions have focused on taking away things that do not belong and adding in what does.
The removal of two willows over our septic system (don’t ask why someone thirty years ago would have planted them there in the first place) changed more than the balance in my checking account (removing sixty-feet tall trees is expensive). It changed the view from our kitchen window, and also of our kitchen window. Because we live in the center of Ashley Falls and our house sits on the western edge of the property, this window always felt a bit exposed, even with the willows there. Historically, this led to making sure one was properly dressed before making morning coffee. A few flowering quince, an old rhododendron, and a chestnut still filled the area, but the removal of the willows exposed us even more to our fellow townsfolk, a situation made worse by my considerably relaxed COVID-era standards. It’s not that the local police were ever called or anything like that, but it might be better to give our neighbors something more attractive to look at (like plants) than me with morning hair. It seemed easier to rethink the area than to re-examine my morning appearance.
I had already done some adding before the subtraction of the willows took place. The aforementioned rhododendron was moved last fall from a spot out front where it did not belong into this area and, knowing the willows were coming down, I had also purchased and planted a white weeping redbud. I shed my last tears for the weeping willows well before mid-March when they were cut to the ground, mainly because I had long ago tired of picking up their catkins and twigs. (Willows are messy trees.) For me, their departure was not about loss, but about what was to come. I now had a full sun site, and this allowed me to consider new options, including conifers that would not have been able to grow in the shade of the old willows and could serve as a green dressing screen in front of our kitchen window.
So I subtracted two sixty-foot willows and added a weeping Alaskan cedar, while identifying a few spots for the addition of a Himalayan pine and a few other sun-loving conifers yet to be purchased. This still left me plenty of space to play with, and this week I planted a trio of ‘Mount Airy’ fothergillas, a mountain hydrangea, and a rosemary willow (its piney foliage will blend in with the new coniferous additions, while calling to mind the much larger willows that were once there). The rosemary willow can be cut back hard and kept in scale. As it is not planted directly over the septic the way the old weeping willows had been, it should not impact our drainage system. Some mountain mint and a number of sea oats also came my way from a gardening friend in the city and were added in drifts throughout the area. I am eager to see their effect as they multiply and mature.
Addition and subtraction are important in gardening, but sometimes the most exciting thing isn’t adding something, or taking it away, but placing it elsewhere – moving an item or two from one side of the equation to the other, if you will. This last approach is also not a part of the graph paper approach to gardening. Most garden design classes seem to treat the design, and not the actual landscape, as the end product, but the real world sometimes calls for action and a reworking of the equation. With this in mind and a shovel in hand, I moved a ‘Hartlage Wine’ calycanthus from one side of the border to the other, giving the area a better balance of shapes and forms.
I know my calculations, like those of Henry thinking about the treats in my pocket, have not come to a zero-sum game. As I contemplate the need to add in some asters and ferns, and perhaps plant a Clematis rubens up the side of the house, I give Henry the last treat in my pocket. I stand with him and enjoy the sum of the parts of this border as it is today, knowing that gardening is like calculating pi. It keeps going on and on with no end in sight.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
