Nurturing the Gardening Gene

May 11th, 2006

   I’ve met a lot of superb gardeners.

   One thing they all seem to have in common – besides a compost pile – is a close relative that ignited a love of gardening in them.

   Sometimes it’s a plant-nut dad, but more often, it’s a mother or grandmother.

   The spark doesn’t usually ignite directly.

   It’s almost like there’s some kind of temporarily dormant gardening gene that gets passed along by osmosis, probably while we’re a teen-ager moaning about having to pull weeds or rake leaves.

   The gene ferments for years until we have our own kids or hit fortysomething… then one day it bubbles out.

   Next thing we know, weeding is suddenly a pleasant memory, and we’re planting dwarf lilacs and paying more attention to rock gardens than rock groups.

   It’s no wonder I’m hopelessly addicted to the scent of freshly turned compost and the seduction of yet one more new tomato variety.

   My whole family is crawling with people who got down and dirty.

   My roots literally are all about roots.

   I didn’t know my grandfather very well – he died of asthma when I was little more than a toddler – but I do remember his sprawling, half-acre vegetable rectangle next to the alley out back.

   It was the consummate Victory Garden. Grandpa would hoe between the long, straight rows, dig up potatoes like hidden Easter eggs, and shake a big burlap bag to scatter pest-repelling limestone dust over the plants.

   My dad was more a tomato and fruit-tree guy, but what I remember most about his gardening is the constant battle with the groundhogs and rabbits. Groundhogs would even climb our trees to eat the ripening peaches.

   To this day, I have no affinity for rabbits, voles and especially groundhogs. If I ever get appointed to the United Nations, my first action will be to propose voting groundhogs off the planet.

   My grandfather-in-law, Pappy Wetzel, made a career out of caring for a fruit-tree orchard in Adams County, and Grandma Wetzel was big-time into all sorts of flowers, both wild and cultivated.

   Grandma Wetzel had this loosely designed flower bed (OK, she just stuck in whatever she liked wherever there was space) that was filled with all the classics – big, white Shasta daisies, old-fashioned bearded iris, a couple of roses, even a few cherry tomato plants in cages.

   It definitely wasn’t a candidate for the cover of Fine Gardening, but she had a great time with it.

   After Grandma Wetzel died, my wife and I added a garden to our back yard that we call “Grandma’s Garden.”

   It’s designed in Grandmallian style with a little of this and a little of that, including a few offspring imported from the original Grandma’s Garden.

   There’s a clump of velvety deep-purple bearded iris with petals so rich and smooth that they look like a king’s satin robe. Another iris blooms in the truest blue of any plant in the yard.

   Pink and white spider flowers (cleome) and purple, pink and blue larkspur self-seed in patches every summer, and we’ve scattered in a couple of pink roses, a few fragrant lavenders, a few purple coneflowers, a puffy white baby’s breath and a patch of classic rosy-white ‘Star Gazer’ lilies that make great cut flowers (when we can bear to sacrifice them from the garden).

   The only stipulation is that all plants must be Grandma plants.

   I can imagine Grandma Wetzel sitting on our garden swing, smiling approvingly at this garden that some would consider to be one step shy of a jumbled mess.

   No matter. There’s something to be said for the classics and a little “free-style” planting.

   Big sweeps of today’s high-octane hybrids may look impressive in the landscape, but sometimes there’s a contrived or almost sanitary feel to these professionalistic beds.

   Something seems to be missing.

   I think it’s the charm.

   Or maybe the nostalgia.

   Or maybe it’s the love and satisfaction that goes along with the poke-it-in-as-you-go approach.

   My own mom likes just about anything that grows – classic or otherwise. She’s just as happy with the first little ripe heirloom tomato of the season as she is with the new-fangled annual flowers that I test-grow every season.

   But believe it or not, in her younger days, she’d just as soon be in a bed of weeds as anywhere.

   She loved pulling weeds.

   Give her a 5-gallon bucket, a skinny trowel and a stool, and she was as happy as a groundhog in a peach tree.

   To tell you the truth, I don’t really mind weeding either. Maybe I inherited the weeding gene.

   But I really think it’s more a matter that weeding just gives an obsessed gardener a good excuse to be in the garden, face-to-face with the awesome variety of beauty and detail that The Great Grower has provided for us.

   It’s funny how many younger people say they really have no taste for gardening because they got stuck with the weeding when they were kids.

   Then time advances, and that long-dormant garden gene emerges.

   Before we know it – as in so many other facets of life – we realize we’re a lot more like Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa than we ever would care to admit.

    Some classic “Grandma Garden” plants worth returning to a garden near you…

SHRUBS

Bayberry

Beautybush

Boxwood

Clethra

Daphne

Deciduous (Flame) azaleas

Deutzia

Flowering quince

Fothergilla

Forsythia

Honeysuckle

Hydrangea

Juniper

Lilac

Mock orange

Rhododendron

Roses

Snowberry

Spirea

Star magnolia

Sweetshrub

Viburnum

Weigela

Witch hazel

Yew

 PERENNIALS

Asters

Balloon flowers

Beebalm (Monarda)

Bellflower (Campanula)

Blazing star (Liatris)

Bleeding heart

Columbine

Coneflowers

Daylilies

Evening primrose

Gaillardia

Goldenrod

Hollyhocks

Hosta

Iris

Jacob’s ladder

Jupiter’s beard

Lance-leaf coreopsis

Lavender

Lilies

Mullein (Verbascum)

Peonies

Penstemon

Pinks (Dianthus)

Phlox

Poppies

Shasta daisy

Speedwell (Veronica)

Spiderwort

Yarrow

 ANNUALS

Ageratum

Alyssum

Celosia

Cleome

Coleus

Dahlias

Geraniums

Gomphrena

Heliotrope

Larkspur

Marigolds

Nasturtiums

Nicotiana

Petunia

Portulaca

Salvia

Sunflowers

Snapdragons

Sweet peas

Verbena