An Unlikely Gardener

I ordered my Deluxe Pollinator Garden one night when the birds were chatty, the scotch was handy, and the house seemed bare. The first moment of spring teased me with an undercurrent of warm air infused with an illusive promise that made me want to take off a layer and look at pretty flowers. My neighbor, who has her wonderful daughter deliver exquisite, cut flowers from her garden, told me about this. Did you know you could order a garden in a box? 

A blank slate (dog not included)

They send plants with a key showing where to place what. A plant by numbers if you will. They would ship it, zone considering, when the danger of frost had passed, giving me time procrastinate arranging the bed, I assumed, climate change willing. I steeled myself and offered my face as confirmation. They’d taken the guess work out. How hard could it be?

Despite popular belief, even when I was growing up, more than one tree grew in Brooklyn. Perhaps they were planted by themselves in a series of pulled up squares of concrete along an avenue, or solitary on a lawn, but they were stately and tall. Any gardens were a one per house situation in an area rug sized plot. Many took their patch of earth seriously, planting and cultivating a bulbs and some annuals year after year.

New immigrants had the best gardens with old men cultivating beloved, heirloom fig trees and potted, prized tomatoes they’d grafted and smuggled from the old country. They landscaped their patches either on miniature lawns or rusted fire escapes or inside locked and dingy courtyards, not visible from the street.

I started out on the top floor of a two family we didn’t own or landscape, and moved to the tenth floor of an apartment building where the superintendent tended to the shrubs. Building gardens were designed to keep the sharpest things around the edges in order to discourage loitering or random flower picking. 

Greater New York City clocked the seasons with the sprouting and dying of bulbs and buds while time marched on for us kids inside the rhythm of school, holidays and camp.

My aunt moved to what she called, “the country” on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania and started her own garden, where to this day, she will give you a tour of her plants. A calla lily here, a bee balm there, a wash of daffodils guarded by a hillside of hostas. Impressive, loving, and a painstaking endeavor, it has proved its own, fragrant reward for anyone who makes the pilgrimage to Beverly’s Hill to see her.

On the other hand, historically anyway, there’s nothing I can’t kill. In the beginning it was a matter of being busy and not falling into a routine, or being far too rigid. I either forgot all about the houseplants, or over tended to them, not leaving them alone until they withered—an interesting metaphor. 

In my first ever house, on Long Island, I had a flowering cherry and a deep purple lilac bush. Those fragrant blooms were my grandmother’s favorite flower and I took it as a good omen when we found a house on Lilac Lane. Ironically, in an absolute metaphor for a Long Island I do miss, we were the only ones on the block to grow them.

I was often inspired to try my hand at playing in the dirt in my first ever backyard but my follow through was shoddy on my best days—another unfortunate metaphor. Decades ago, I was wandering through a garden store with two kids in a stroller and found something called a butterfly bush. I like butterflies, I thought. Might be worth risking the fingernails.

It proved a gateway bush for me as I’d wait for the late July bloom that brought a flock of butterflies, relentless in their pursuit of each other and nectar. Each one that landed felt like a tiny victory. Hmm, I thought. I might not like the planting, but I’ll feed anything.

My aunt leant me a hand, coming periodically to plant flowers along the periphery of my few beds. She sowed a stand of day lilies, or a few that then decided to root themselves so that the bed became a study in orange every year.  Not only did they help hide us from the kids when my cousins came to smoke, but I put them into vases, grateful to get to spend their one day open with them.

I moved up to Massachusetts and onto an acre of mostly grass, oak and pine trees. The demands on my time now are such that I can contemplate drawing on the blank slate of my yard. I assumed I needed a landscape architect, but people here, the ones I know anyway, are DIYers. They toil in the land and eat dirt. They chew cud, fix farm equipment, and know livestock personally. Either way the grime on their hands is a sign of accomplishment, not an indictment.

The locals come as they are and either no one notices, or they are nice enough to talk about you behind your back. In New York, you will hear what I have to say, because, “Hey, I’m here to help. I gotta guy. He does class A, quality mowing. I’ll send him by.” 

I admit to liking it better this way, but it’s left me with fewer options. My next door neighbor grew up around farms and her gardens are covet worthy. I was ready to pick up the brush and paint a pollinating masterpiece. Or try to anyway. In either case, I assumed I had weeks to figure it out.

When the box of 21 plants arrived in biodegradable pots the next day, I knew I had to do something quick. I might have made the bed, but someone had to make it worthy to lie in. I picked my spot. It was just a matter of figuring it out, I told myself. The carpet of grass wasn’t giving, not even beneath my earnestness. If only I had some help.

 “I wish I was the kind of guy who likes gardening, but I don’t,” my husband insisted on a loop for 25 years whenever anyone mentioned a plant, including broccoli. “I don’t like dirt.”

I had 21 plants from the Deluxe Pollinator Garden that said we’d better get some good soap and figure it out. No matter that I’d been the one to pull the trigger, he was in it with me. There’s an apt metaphor for marriage.

I bought a good amount of dirt and some compost. I headed off my husband’s long, inevitable lecture about the leg work, knowledge and study necessary it was going to take to begin, by just beginning. And by beginning, I mean going outside to pretend to pull up some grass. I made a show of it, bending over the patch with a half hearted yanking of a clump. 

I thought about donating the plants, maybe giving them to the neighbor, or putting them in a forest somewhere in order to let them biodegrade naturally. I wasn’t going to be able to do this on my own.

He came to look over my shoulder and I had a sudden idea.

“Honey,” I said, shielding my eyes from the blinding light. “Do you think there’s a tool that might help?”

His smile was instant but he hid it quickly. “We’ll have to go to Home Depot,” he said. I groaned as I stood, following along. If there was a toy—I mean a tool—for him to play with, viola, I had my labor.

No longer blank slate

The guy at Home Depot looked incredulous, though as usual, maintained his New England unflappable politeness. “Fifteen x 7 is an awfully small plot. This is commercial grade. It’s like taking aim at a pigeon with an aircraft carrier. You might hit the bird, but you’ll make a mess.” 

Instead he offered us a claw on a pole and we pulled it up that way, my husband’s engineering brain happily strategizing as I collected mounds of grass behind him. Eventually, we cleared the grass and filled in the dirt, tucking the plants safely into the ground where I welcomed them home the way my aunt taught me to, out loud and with awe filled gratitude. 

It took us the better part of the weekend. We wanted to give up and clean out the garage instead. It might have been easier. I had to redirect our attention over and over. Exhausted and accomplished, we felt great as the day faded into evening. 

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said, lining his new tool up alongside the other ones we’d never need again. “Maybe I am the kind of person who likes gardening?”

I smiled. You never know when a planted seed might begin to flower.