A Lifetime of Gardening; Sydney Eddison

I've read and enjoyed each of the past books by the prolific garden writer, Sydney Eddison.  A Passion for Daylilies is a must read for daylily fanatics, Self-Taught Gardener is a good read for any beginning gardener, and The Gardener's Palate is a classic primer on color arrangement in the garden.  In the long run, however, I believe her most recent text, Gardening for a Lifetime (Timber Press, 2010), will become my favorite.  Subtitled "How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older," Gardening for a Lifetime is a chronicle of Ms. Eddison's struggle to adapt her world-famous garden to the changes necessitated by the recent loss of her husband and to the ravages of her own aging.

Ms. Eddison draws the reader down that dreaded path with her by the opening words "I cannot leave this place.  It is where my husband and I spent a lifetime together and where I want to stay."  The book is full of ideas to simplify any garden in an effort to ease maintenance chores, but it also is full of lessons to help Kansas gardeners age gracefully with their own gardens and to accept that moving stone and fighting the prairie wind are activities for the young and strong pioneers, not the beaten-down survivors.  Each chapter is summed up by a page of "Gleanings," which are simple lists of the ideas previously presented in an effort to keep the reader focused on applying the lessons to our own gardens.  Ms. Eddison is at peace with lessened deadheading, at ease with casting out the prima donna's of our gardens in favor of the stalwart survivors, and she faces, with grace, the need to hire help for her garden chores.

May we all be as successful in aging with our gardens!

Blinded to Drought

Oops, I made a slight gardening error by taking a short four-day vacation this week.  We've had higher than normal temperatures for a month (one day topping at 110F) and the last significant rainfall was 1 inch on July 14th (this is being written on August 8th).  I knew things were getting a little dry, but prior to leaving, I watered the newest plants and everything else was looking pretty solid. Oh sure, I'd noticed that the clay soil was pulling away from my limestone edging a little bit, but the plants were toughing it out.  Normally, I don't even think about watering plants that have been in the ground over a year. I prefer to practice the tough love xeriscapic approach to gardening.

Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'

But I should have listened to the story told by the clay and edging.  Upon my return, it was obvious that my 'Royal Star' Magnolia (Magnolia stellata ‘Royal Star’) and several panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’, for instance) were showing the effects of the hot weather and drought.  And a 'Jelena' Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena') was practically burnt to a crisp.  Obviously I could have avoided the worst of the damage if I had recognized that the drought was reaching a critical phase and if I had started watching these indicator plants earlier.

Rudbeckia hirta

Happily, nothing else in the garden has yet been blasted in the Kansas furnace.  All the roses go merrily along, although perhaps they are not blooming as profusely in the heat, and the crape myrtles and the Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are just laughing at the heat.

Plant Immortality

It's sometimes astonishing to me how fleeting the life of plants in my garden can be.  Planted one minute and dead the next, particularly if I forget to water in the midst of our annual summer drought.  Or planted one spring and never seen again the next spring, despite strict adherence to zone recommendations, site preparation, and cultural requirements.

But there are some plants who are not nearly so ephemeral.  Trees are often the one plant everyone can name, even gardening neophytes, that often outlive the planter.  Even a common American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) often transcends a simple human lifespan, let alone the better examples given by giant California Redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) or Great Basin Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) that outlive entire human regimes and societies.  But such immortality is also seemingly given to less obvious plants that are all around us.  Herbaceous peonies are a prime example of a "plant it once and it's with you ever after" plant.  They are often seen in older unkempt graveyards from more than a century back or found around old homesteads as the sole survivors of a young pioneer bride's dowry.  The peonies pictured below form a line, a herbaceous wall if you will, separating my father's orchard from the vegetable garden.  They've been there for at least 60 years, planted and left behind by the previous owners of the farm who themselves are now long deceased.  The peonies sit unknowing, their survival unaffected by the ravages of thunderstorm and snow, partially in sun and partially in shade, cared for only in a minimal way by mulch-mowing them off at the end of the summer season for the past 50 years.

So if you want to touch immortality, your choices seem to be to live a quiet life rooted in the soil, unaffected by the passage of years and seasons, or perhaps, sometimes, to just to plant a peony.