I knew I was a gardener when I broke two vertebrae and the pain of not being able to work in my garden was worse than the pain in my back.
I knew I was a gardener when my friend Becky said, “I just spent a fortune on bobcat urine,” and I didn’t laugh, but instead asked if it really does keep critters at bay.
I knew I was a gardener when I grabbed the American Horticultural Society’s plant guide to identify the flowers on my wallpaper…when I lost my third pair of pruning shears…when “You should have seen it last week,” became my mantra.
Some people are born gardeners while others (like me) convert later in life. But even after years of digging, planting, hauling, and weeding, I still feel presumptuous calling myself a gardener. When I bought my first house at age thirty-seven, I didn’t know the difference between an annual and a perennial. I had just moved from a condo in California to a house in New England that came with more than an acre of green—trees, shrubs, grass, flowers. The previous owners had planted tons of stuff and tended it lovingly. Would I kill it all?
They say you must name your fears before you can conquer them, so the first thing I did was walk around my yard with a gardening friend. I still have those notes: Cottoneaster? Spi-ree-ah by the deck. Red leaves = Jap. maple.
The first spring in my new house I felt like Dorothy in Technicolor Oz. Up popped the tulips, red and yellow in the backyard and pastel in the front. The lilac on the corner surprised me with white-edged petals. The fuchsia Nova Zembla rhododendrons dazzled me.
I took my first baby step and planted some daylilies. I obsessed over these indestructible flowers’ placement, soil, and sun requirements. I coddled them like orchids in Alaska. When they finally bloomed I was officially addicted.
I started noticing other people’s gardens, sneaking over to admire a neighbor’s climbing hydrangea, veering onto the road’s shoulder for a closer look at an unusual phlox.
The White Flower Farm catalog replaced novels on my bedside table. I formed actual opinions on mulch and manure. I met other obsessives: a daylily hybridizer, a hosta fancier, a woman who single-handedly built a forty-foot stream in her backyard.
The most memorable advice I received was from an old man who owned one of my town’s most spectacular gardens, including ten thousand daffodils. First he told me his secret for keeping weeds out of his flowers—gallons of chemical pesticides. But then he told me something wise: “No one can tell you how to garden,” he said. “Your garden is you.”
Indeed, my green acre has become very different from that of its previous gardeners. It’s a little haphazard, with some successes—both planned and accidental—and with plenty of room for improvement. It is a lot like me.
