I can’t remember the first time I gardened—digging my hands into dirt, pulling weeds, sun warming my back—for joy. I can’t say when I began, but I do remember the times growing up when I would steal plants from my mother’s flower beds and stick them in my own hodge-podge beds. I ran like a fugitive. Most of the time she caught me, but sometimes I would get away with pilfering her plants. Now 15 years later, the stolen hostas, lily of the valley, or lambs ear still remain in the nooks and crannies of my childhood garden, growing where I hid them years ago—growing where my love of gardening took root.
Now complete with a winding path leading to a trellis at the end of the plot, my childhood garden has also grown up within the past 15 years. Full of mysteries, the garden is not perfect. But what garden is? Taking inspiration from a favorite childhood novel, The Secret Garden, I tried taking an area of sun scorched ground and create a space tucked away beneath the shade of trees. Over a decade later, weeds grow in abundance along the fence among ferns and flowering butterfly bushes, and the edges of the garden often look scraggly, and overgrown. The stepping stone path winds under the canopy of flowering crab apple trees and a walnut tree given to me by my Uncle Steve, who being a Civil War enthusiast, had brought home the seed from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A lilac bush planted in the early days of my gardening slowly envelopes the space year after year with the scent of lilac, a favorite of mine. Although not fully grown, the trees create a tunnel of leaves and in the spring, the pink and white crab apple blooms are fragrant with the promise of summer fruit. A garden is never finished, only a constant work in progress, yet when I moved out of my childhood home when I married Andrew, I left satisfied.
Andrew and I moved into our home in 2018. Now living in city limits, the yard is a fraction of the space I was used to while growing up. The yard was clean, yet barren. Nothing grew in the back yard except grass and weeds along the riverbank. Excited with the blank canvas we had found, and the seemingly limitless possibilities, I found myself perusing the internet for hours on end looking for inspiration and ideas for my new garden. When the internet could only provide me pictures of beautifully landscaped yards but no depth, I began looking elsewhere. From podcasts to gardening shows, I was soaking in information on how to compost, plant tomatoes, what kind of tools I needed, and so much more, but with all of this information I still wanted to know more.
One night, I came across a tv show that ran in the UK called Big Dreams, Small Spaces. Over there, gardening is a huge part of everyday life. Everyone has a garden, even the tiniest plot of grass is a garden—not a yard. I was immediately intrigued: there’s an entire country that seems obsessed with gardening. Featuring a man named Monty Don who travels the country to help guide new gardeners in creating their own version of the Garden of Eden, the man is the poster child of British gardening. What made his show so interesting was that instead of swooping in to save the struggling gardener from the perils of doing the job themselves, Monty guides them in order to help them create, and cultivate the garden of their dreams with their own hands. At the end of each episode, there is a palpable sense of pride from the gardeners as they look out at months of tireless work finally come to fruition. And the limitless ideas of how to transform a boring plot in the middle of London into a Japanese Tea garden or a Norwegian Forest, or a sensory garden for special needs children is, to say the least, inspiring to watch. My yard is three times as large as many of the gardens showcased on the show, despite being considered small in the US, and it made me realize how blessed so many of us are to have our sizable yards. We are blessed with this space yet so much of it is wasted on grass and taken for granted, my yard included. If they could do all that with such a small space, what could I do with mine?
After watching his show, I wanted to learn more from Monty Don but it wasn’t until Andrew and I traveled to Scotland when I came across one of his books titled, Down to Earth. It was late in the evening, we had just eaten dinner at a pub in Fort William and while walking back to our car in the darkened streets, we noticed that the local bookstore’s light was on and an “Open” sign on the door. By this time, Monty Don was a house hold name. When talking about our yard, references to Monty Don were common and ample, and Andrew learned to accept that Monty Don was now a part of our home. So when I picked up the book by Monty Don off the shelf, all Andrew had to do was see the man’s face on the cover before he took and paid for it without saying a word. It is still one of my favorite purchases from the trip.
Although based on the milder seasons of England, Monty Don’s Down to Earth is a fantastic, comprehensive guide on how to get to work on your dream garden. Broken into sections by month, he gives detailed advice on what tasks should be accomplished per month and like I said, since their climate is a bit different from Mid-west America, I had to adjust some of the information provided but that was only a small percentage of the book. One of my favorite parts of reading Down to Earth was finding out how Monty Don came to love gardening, and how that journey led him to becoming Britain’s beloved gardener.
Starting young, gardening at first was just another chore for him to finish before play. Yet, one day when he was 17, he found his love for gardening while sowing carrot seeds into the ground to be grown and harvested for his family’s table. He was overcome with a sense of fulfillment, his fingers deep in the earth and his back warm with the sun, and although having pursued art soon after, traveling throughout Europe to study painting, he didn’t return to gardening until years later. Perhaps it was the memories of how dirt felt in his hands when pulling weeds from the ground, or how a fresh, sun-ripened tomato straight off the vine tasted helped him find his way, but the rest is history as they say.
Unlike most gardening how-to books, Monty does not encourage others to think of gardening as a way of taming nature, but rather befriending it and caring for it.
“There is a traditional approach which assumes that gardening is some kind of battle to be won or lost...This is nonsense on every level. You need nature more than she needs you…Serve her well and she will look after you. Abuse her and everyone loses.”
It surprises me how much this makes sense, and that it never occurred to me before. However, for many of us, it is so ingrained in our everyday psyche to use pesticides, to use poisons and traps, to use these tactics to blast any imperfection into oblivion that it is easy to forget that each action has a consequence—you can’t easily destroy one without harming something else. Look at the destruction we caused with the pesticide, DDT. We almost lost many precious animals such as the Bald Eagle to this need of eradicating ‘pests’.
“Most so-called pests are nearly always a symptom rather than the disease. Instead of trying to get rid of them, work out what you are doing to make them so welcome in your garden.”
And if the pest is one that is absolutely detrimental to the garden, Monty employs techniques that organically rid the problem from the garden, and he covers how he does it throughout his book. Like in his own garden, Monty encourages other gardeners to garden as organically as possible. For beginning gardeners like myself, and one with a tight budget, it can be tricky, but knowing the benefits of organic gardening is rewarding—there’s no guilt and fear, and the garden and wildlife flourishes in appreciation.
“Cultivate insects. Regarding insects as ‘bugs’ or ‘pests’ is absurd. They are the most important visible wildlife in your garden. Value them accordingly. Create suitable habitats, provide food and never, ever, kill insects indiscriminately.”
One morning, I walked outside on my deck to look out at my river when I saw a brilliant flash of blue out of the corner of my eye. Looking down, I discovered an iridescent blue and black swallowtail butterfly—one that I hadn’t seen in years, and never in my garden. Then, a flash of orange when another butterfly came fluttering by, landing on my bird bath and fanning its wings at me. All insects, like the butterfly, are fragile and delicate and need protection, as do all wildlife. Even the annoying ones. They are here for a reason, and like a giant puzzle, a missing piece renders the whole picture incomplete.
After finishing his book in the late spring, I noticed a huge improvement to Andrew and I's garden. We more than doubled our back garden space, and we tried growing a few new plants this year for the first time: carrots, raspberries, green onion, just to name a few. Along with these, our roses returned, and our sunflowers now tower over our heads. To look out at our garden now is to see how much Monty Don's book, and his guidance have helped me along my journey to becoming a better gardener. I don't believe there is an end in sight, no destination or milestone to reach. Gardening is one of those hobbies that continually teach you something new each day, something even Monty himself admits.
With the days of summer halfway over, I'm happy to say this year has been one of my most accomplished years in the garden. I'm not finished, but as the hot summer days continue on now I'm mostly enjoying the fruits of our labor and maintaining the garden until it's time to put it to bed for winter. And although the long days of winter are a distant yet dreadful time of year for me, I will find other books by Monty Don to hold me over during those long, cold days of no sunshine and the smell of flowers.
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