Tending Our Garden

I enjoyed Karen Neill’s article in the News and Record this past weekend about invasive species, which segued into a bit of an encouragement about the need to stay on top of things in the garden. This brought back some childhood memories and brought up a few reflections.

She commented on the now ubiquitous Ailanthus, or Queen of Heaven Tree, which grows along about every roadside and in about every disturbed area you see. It’s really not a very pretty tree at all, and it’s flowers are sort of a dull creamy yellow, but that is actually too favorable a description for such a homely flower. We called them peanut butter trees when I was younger because if you crush the leaves in your fingers and then you smell your fingers they smell like peanut butter.

Karen also made comments about the Princess Tree, which I only identified this past Spring along Old Battleground. It’s so pretty I forgive it for being invasive and taking over space belonging to native plants.

Somewhere in the article Karen segued into talking about complaints from some gardener about Trumpet Vine shoots volunteering here and their in the garden. Apparently the said gardener wanted to cut down the Trumpet Vine. Karen reminded us that Trumpet Vines, a native plant, are really quite beautiful, and worth the small effort of pulling out a volunteer here or there.

I agree. I love our native vines, well, all but Poison Ivy, which I respect more than love. Trumpet Vine, Virginia Creeper, Crossvine, Moonseed vine, American Wisteria, Muscadine, and many species of Smilax ("sticker bushes"). I personally love English Ivy though it is technically an invasive species – it’s just been around so long it seems native. And Pachysandra, though not a vine, often seems to spread like one, so I’ll throw it in there too.

Earlier this summer my nephew and I had a great time swinging on a huge Muscadine vine in Columbia. Memories of childhood and childhood dares. “I dare you to climb that vine all the way to the top of that tree.” “OK, you’re on.” If my poor mom had had a clue!

Back to gardening.

My grandmother and grandfather moved to Columbia from Tampa in 1943 and bought a small house in a suburb, a house whose long narrow back yard sloped down to a creek bottom. Along this creek bottom grew the largest loblolly pines in Richland County. Over the course of twenty years they and their two next door neighbors transformed their yards into a highlight of the Columbia garden tour. One day I will scan and post a postcard of their yards put out by the city of Columbia.

They did it all themselves. They were real gardeners, grafting and rooting azaleas and camellias and even cross fertilizing lilies to come up with new patterns and colors. As to vines, there was English Ivy, Pachysandra, Wisteria, and Virginia Creeper, all of which required constant vigilance to keep them in their place.

Pruning was an art. I would walk behind Nanny while she pruned azaleas and camellias with precision, by hand, with small hand clippers, still my favorite tool. There was, and is, an art to pruning.

My point? Real gardening is a hands on, constant, pro-active, entropy denying channeling of energy. You just don’t see it much any more. Folks are too busy. A beautiful Trumpet Vine sends out underground shoots which pop up here and there? Too much trouble? Kill the vine. Azaleas too hard to learn to actually prune? Then buzz them, like a hedge. And the garden gods cry “murder, murder!”

Gardening and hurrying don’t go well together. A garden is a slowly cooked meal that takes seasons and seasons to prepare. It is a pot you have to watch boil a little each hour so to speak. It takes tending. And just as the good shepherd must know his sheep, the good gardener must know his plants, and love them. And even, maybe, if nobody is looking, talk to them…

My grandmother did not care about the “perfect lawn.” Good gardeners don’t, I don’t think. The perfect lawn is a creation of chemical companies, not gardeners. Nanny liked a decent lawn, and she tended it. In fact, her lawn was made of “Charleston grass,” a kind of a wide bladed version of Centipede. It doesn’t grow up here. They mowed it with a manual mower. With all the loblolly pines and dogwoods, and one or two enormous water oaks, there was too much shade for a perfect lawn, and there were spots here and there of mostly moss. She liked her moss just fine.

The way I figure it, if a culture is too busy to cultivate good gardeners, it’s just too busy. Gardening requires energy; but a lot of that energy isn’t mere brute force, it’s the energy expended a little each day, often just planning and piddling. “Hmm, I’d like to move this over there, and that over here. I think I’ll prune my azaleas today. Today I need to weed.”

Theologically it bothers me that we’re too busy to garden. For if we’re too busy to care for our own little spaces, we’re probably too busy to be what we're called to be as human beings and care for that big space we called earth. That makes me sad.

We were meant to tend gardens you know. As it says…

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” We need to remember that.