The Garden Buzz

If You're Not in the Garden...

If you're not in the garden you're not gardening.  I know, it's August, you're sick of the garden. If you don't go out there you can't see the weeds, the blight, the Japanese beetle damage.  La-la-la-la-la. It's so much easier to sit in air-conditioned denial. But gardening is more than physical labor, it is observation, appreciation. So if you're not in the garden you might be missing something.

You might miss that moment when a Monarch butterfly finds the new buddleia, "Miss Ruby". Only it's not ruby, but more electric magenta/not-quite fuchsia, and when paired with the Monarch's orange and black wings, the result is slightly psychedelic.

Or you might get a call from people scouting for next year's Master Gardener tour and realize you have 24 hours to weed your entire property, including the ten-zillion just-germinated cottonwood seedlings you hoped would die a slow and painful death during winter! Yes, it pays to be vigilant.

So whaddyado? The best garden design advice I ever garnered states that people viewing landscapes "read the edges". If the edges are tidy you can get away with all manner of horticultural neglect and abuse.  Border a garden with a neat little hedge or edge and you can have a mishmash of one of every plant that ever caught your fancy at the garden center, and still look like you know what you're doing.

When I first visited my husband's hometown decades ago, I marveled at the pastoral beauty, the well-kept farms and orderly fields.  Driving the back roads he would often use the term, road-farming. That's when a farmer keeps the weeds down close to the road for appearance's sake, and lets it slide further in and away from sight.

My garden is a pollinator's paradise; a cottage garden styled with a soft framework of winterberry and blueberry hedges. Yet  at this time of year the edges blur as self-seeders are allowed to express themselves. So I did what I had to do. I road farmed it!

  

Welcome to The Garden Buzz!

Not another gardening blog! For centuries mother have intoned to their children, "Just because everyone's doing it is no reason for you to do it.  Would you jump off a cliff....?" Blah, blah, blog. So many blogs, so much blather. Once you get past the obvious onomatopoeia, you just have to jump off that proverbial cliff and hope you don't embarrass yourself.

Then the next question is when to start said gardening blog. It would seem natural to begin with the burgeoning buds of May, when tender shoots of green, but more likely pale and pink, emerge from the sodden ground. Others would argue that the gardening year commences earlier when catalogs fill the mailbox, as gardeners sip steaming cups while contemplating the year yet to come. Maybe it is mid-June when the garden looks its best and a satisfied smugness seems appropriate.

I propose to start in the weed-weary days of late August, when you harbor secret guilt pangs for wishing it was all done. Yes, you are tired of gardening by now. However it is easy to lament that the lush landscape peaks then falls to frost too soon. Where did summer go?

It is precisely this time of year that we as gardeners survey our successes and re-evaluate our less than leafy outcomes. We congratulate ourselves on winning color combinations, make note to move a plant to more sun, perhaps moister soil, and dream of new landscape designs. Good gardeners are already thinking "Next year..." So just maybe the gardening year starts now.