In the beginning there was grass, only grass. Lots of grass. In fact it looked like the house was floating in the middle of a green ocean (sorry, our lawn was actually more like a tiny green puddle, not ocean-size).
Grass upon grass upon more grass was my recollection of the yard of our newly-bought 1960s two-storey house. Oh, an overgrown evergreen juniper hugged the lawn at the end of the driveway; a circle of juniper shrubs forlornly resided by the understory of the giant pine tree of our neighbor.
At that time — about 2 1/2 decades ago — our neighborhood of senior citizens, in fact, had all plain grassy yards and side yards and backyards. A few giant pine trees and rows of emerald green cedar (thuja occidentalis Smaragd) delineated property boundaries. Our neighborhood looked like a mini golf course with well-manicured greens, and tiny ranchers breaking the green expanse.
We were the new kids in the block. Literally. All our neighbors were retired or empty-nesters or soon-to-retire homeowners. For these older people, it seemed to mow an expanse of grass was much easier than maintaining swaths of flower beds and gardens.
We felt it that way, too: we spent less than 30 minutes mowing my grass, once in two weeks or even less frequently. We were only compelled to drag out our lawnmower when the neighbors, or their landscapers, mowed their lawns. Just so our grass wouldn’t look out of place in this spartan neighborhood where pride came from having a well-clipped lush lawn.
Our garden has transformed every year, month after month, especially in spring and summer.
Its beginning actually was nondescript, uneventful, nothing out of the extraordinary. Slowly it has evolved into a better garden. As we bring in more plants from neighborhood plant sales, big-box garden centers, and local nurseries, our garden takes new shapes and bulks up. The garden has gotten sporadic make-overs as we eagerly apply what we have learned from gardening books and from our many gardening mistakes.
Former neighbors behind our place have contributed to the garden’s transformations. They were great sources of cast-away plants. We salvaged a grown blush pink rhododendron from their curbside garbage pile. It now brightens a shady patch underneath our neighbors’ pine tree. Another cast-off rhododendron from the same neighbors is proudly showing off its pink blooms by our living room window. These two rhododendron shrubs are now our height and our delight.
Too bad, these lovely neighbors have moved out and we haven’t seen them since, but their flowering rhododendrons keep our fond memories of them still blooming.
The garden evolves, each section changing as we try to improve its looks, and as our knowledge about the various plants deepens. We move plants to a better location. We transplant many a plant when we become more educated about their respective growing habits and needs.
Thus, the shady plants are moved to areas where they only get early morning or late afternoon sun instead of letting them withstand their old location where they had to endure noonday sun or the stealthily damaging and drying wind along the roadside. The sun-lovers take over the south and east-facing gardens. The acid-loving perennials are planted near the pine trees where their needles continuously fertilize and acidify the soil. The alkaline lovers get transplanted to the beds where our home renovators “accidentally” dumped copious left-over cement and buried some crushed pieces of gyprock.
Our favorite hosta Francee, for example, was first planted right at the front of our entrance garden bed, so the hosta could command the best place to show off its grandeur to the passing public. But it had a hard time overcoming the whole day’s blazing sun, so it sulked for the longest time. We dug up some of its side shoots and arranged them in the shade of a topiary dwarf Alberta spruce. But the shallow roots of the topiary deprived them of the much-needed water supply, so we again moved the hostas to a shady, water-retentive area of another flower bed.
Now, hosta Francee has found its ideal place. It sends out the biggest and most number of foliage it can muster. And when it is time for it to bloom, it rewards us with longer lasting and seemingly more fragrant wands of flowers.
Too bad, the hosta’s parent clumps have not shown up this year. My wife thinks they finally had enough of it in their original location. They committed protest suicide.
But I still suspect some envious neighbors (yes, I know a young couple who just moved several houses down from us with luscious clumps of hosta Francee) “stole” my favorite plant. But then I’m no Sherlock Holmes.
So we move some plants like fuzzy interior decorators would move key furniture pieces to and fro until the ideal arrangement is attained.
Alas, at times, we forget to transplant a few plants to a more suitable place, and over time they simply peter out to oblivion. On the bright side, now we have a new place in the garden to dig in and put newly discovered garden favorites.
Yes, we play favorites in our limited-space garden. The garden’s anchor plants come and go. Every year, we change our most favored plants.
One year, we splurged on magenta and fuchsia pink azaleas. The next year the azaleas were overshadowed by our new favorite: rhododendrons of different colors. Then we grew tired of the circus of colors provided by the rhododendrons, so the following year we settled for the more subtle colors and blooms of garden roses. But roses proved to be finicky when not given enough space. So we brought in the more robust and hard-to-kill hostas and ferns the next year.
For couple of years before, our hearts were captured by trumpet lilies. This year, we are going crazy over clematis.
So our changing tastes in plants create a jumble of plant types and varieties that make our garden look more like a riot of an English garden gone awry than of an organized semi-formal garden that we initially wanted.
Eclectic might best describe our present garden.
Our garden keeps growing every year. That’s an inevitable result when we change plant favorites every year, even every season. So we have to expand a flower bed here and there.
A new flower bed or a block of a vegetable garden might be a given year’s project.
We modify a berm and give it more height so plants at the back get exposure and can still show off their blooms without being blocked by plants in front of them.
We have great plans, many of them. We’re just too slow in the execution department. And having no deep-holed landscaping budget doesn’t help either. In the past, we held popular plant sales to boost our sagging budget. In the last two years, Covid has cancelled our much-needed plant sale. Darn!
Every year, we have a garden project. We have just completed a postage stamp-size corn patch at the back. Then we hope to convert part of our front entrance flower bed into an adjunct berm.
We’ve been on this berm project for almost a month now. Budget constrictions, you know. Wished money can truly grow on trees!
I’ve asked an excavation guy to give me — meaning, for free — his load of dug-up soil from a residential construction site. Using my old van, I have made three trips to grab some garden soil – for free – from three different people who posted the freebies on Craig’s List. After work, I have hauled a few cubic meters of good garden soil, into my van, from a landscaping company. Now, everything can’t be for free.
Before the night falls, for the last two weeks now, my wife and I have carted several wheelbarrow-ful of the soil to slowly build the berm. We don’t want to hire professional landscapers. Limited budget necessitates DIY’s.
I’ve been working on this project bit by bit about two hours after work for almost a month now, as I’ve earlier mentioned. And that’s in the sun and in the rain. I sweat in the sun, and I get drenched in the rain. Either way when I’m done working in the garden for the day, I go into the house soaking wet. Crazy, huh?
And I’m not even halfway done.
The plants I have dug up from that bed are now impatiently waiting in my garage, longing to be planted back in the berm ASAP.
Soon, babies, pretty soon, OK?
In contrast, our two new young neighbors across the street have hired together professional landscapers this week. I can only salivate at the hired landscapers’ backhoe that, in less than half a day last Monday, dug up the old shrubs and gnarled “ancient” roots of the neighbors’ overgrown shrubs and half-dead pine tree, and scraped whatever was in their lawns.
I can only look with longing eyes at the grader that flattened the neighbors’ soil in a day or two. Last Wednesday, truckloads of dark, rich topsoil were dumped into the neighbors’ newly cleared backyards. Hah! In a week’s time the two neighbors’ backyards are completely ready for the truckloads of flowering perennials that were delivered yesterday.
“Those new neighbors must have lots of money,” my wife sadly commented, glancing at me.
I simply furiously wheeled more soil to build up my berm. We worked in silence that day.
So, with a good budget, beautiful and professionally landscaped backyards are waiting to be enjoyed by our two new and young neighbors this weekend. Whereas, we are still belaboring on getting this berm project completed.
But such is life. Despite what people say about this Covid pandemic as a great equalizer, meaning everyone is now in the same boat, on equal footing, I still believe that some are luckier than others. Our gardening projects — mine and those of the neighbors across the street — prove my point.
But I’m sure I soon will also enjoy the fruits of my labor.
“Just wait, and you’ll see,” I finally uttered something to my wife as I huff and puff as I push my rickety wheelbarrow.
My lower back definitely needs a massage, and my legs and arms and fingers are also complaining. But for now, I don’t really want to listen to any body part complaining. Or anybody whining. I’ve got a berm to complete!
Yup, no pain no gain. That goes for gardening, too.
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