True Dirt

growing gardeners

John Henry's garden reminds me of how I started gardening. There are early stories of my cultivating a relationship with a neighbor across the street whose big blue pansy border was my first flower passion. That was at the age of 3. A couple of years later we moved to a house that had an undeveloped backyard and my mother embarked on her now 50-year (and more) gardening habit. There is a fading Kodachrome of her kneeling at the foot of her first rose bush. She's in pedal-pushers and sneakers. The rose--an American Hybrid Tea--sports a single red bloom. When I brought home a pumpkin seed planted in a sawed off milk carton from school she carved out a corner of the yard and planted it, along with some zinnias, snapdragons, and sweet peas for me to water and tend. I didn't have another garden of my own for many decades but I did develop an interest in wildflowers and roamed much of California and the West in search of wild gardens to photograph. Now, finally, I have a garden of my own. And most Sunday mornings between 10am and noon I have a coffee cup in one hand and the phone in the other, talking to my mother. About our gardens, of course.

Child's Play

John Henry (my 6 year old son) has been a sometimes helper in my garden. He is very enthusiastic, but we sometime run into problems because I want everything just so. I admit to having control freak tendencies.

One afternoon he came up with the solution: "Daddy, can I have my own garden?"

We sequestered a corner of the backyard (the kids' play area anyway) and John Henry proceeded to till his dirt and create a brick border. Over the next few weeks we planted seeds and seedlings of his choosing.

The most fun for me was taking him to the garden store. Normally he doesn't want to go, but this time I told him he could pick anything he wanted. He got excited. "Anything?" he asked. Yes.

At the store I guided him towards things would do well in his corner of the garden (somewhat shady), then let him go wild.

So far the garden has a row of sweat peas (planted as seeds, I'm not even sure where they came from!), a couple of excess Dahlias, a cardinal flower, an odd little fuschia, and a rudbeckia.

Here's what it looks like so far -- sweat peas and Dahlias in front, everything else in back.

Contrasts

It's May and my garden is blooming. Maybe I was just impatient in March ... but finally things are going great.

The former owners of my house loved foxgloves. In fact, a neighbor even brought special foxglove seeds (what a lovely gift!) back from a vacation in England. Over the years the foxgloves have self-seeded so that they come up in any patch of dirt that gets even a small portion of sun and water in the front yard.

The result -- digitalis purpurea everywhere. And that's not a bad thing ... for example:

That's the front door of my house. You might also notice the white calla in the left background and the white shrub rose in the right background.

Of course, you can always have too much of a good thing. To wit

That's Gertrude Jekyll (a lovely David Austin rose) in the front, then foxgloves, and a glorious violet Rhododendron in the back. This view is a valuable lesson in contrasts for me. While each plant is lovely, the color scheme -- pink, pink, and pinky-violet -- is tiring on the eye. My trick -- look at it from a different angle.

Maybe next year I'll plant some Delphinia where the foxgloves are.

A New Orleans garden

Just back from Jazz Fest in New Orleans...

Our friends' house on Dufossat (dew faucet) Street is a narrow "shotgun" cottage like many in the Garden City (also the Crescent City because of its location on a bend in the MIssissippi) with a tiny garden in the back, entirely bricked and surrounded by a high fence. Probably the smallest garden I've ever sat in and very simple. Yet it may be one of the most satisfying gardens I've ever experienced. Mostly, one sits on the wood plank porch or back deck, in the rocking chairs with the fan whirling overhead to fend off mosquitos, a cool beer or iced drink in hand. Banks of green foliage and tree canopy, a few bright blossoms from the potted bromeliads and begonias border the dark brick garden floor with a teacup-size metal drain in the middle. Bits of lacy iron grillework from old New Orleans houses decorate the fence, and other odd bits--chrome hood ornaments, a fish, the letter E, street signs with Mardi Gras parking rules. A bit of sky shows through the feathery canopy of trees, most of them in the close-packed neighbors' yards. A mourning dove coos from a nest nearby and a cardinal skreets near the hanging feeder at the bevy of looting squirrels. The drain is essential for New Orleans is all about water. River water. Ground water. Rain. But even the water is outdone by the heat. Except for the trees, the garden plants lanquish in the exquisite heat. Steam rises from the bricks when the water falls--from hose or sky. The water trickles down the drain and away underneath the city.