10 Things About Gardeners

   Gardeners are a different breed.

   I’m around a lot of them. I see them in action. I hear their questions and thoughts. And for what it’s worth, I’ve come to these 10 conclusions:

   1.) Anyone who says he/she has never killed a plant either has never planted anything or is lying.

   2.) Experienced gardeners are people who have killed a lot of plants.

   3.) Master Gardeners are people who know the names of the plants they’ve killed.

   4.) Horticulturists are people who know both the common and botanic names of the plants they’ve killed.

   5.) Gardeners are some of the most optimistic people I know. No matter how much mayhem occurs in a given season, they fully expect great things next season.

   6.) The most obsessed gardeners refer to their plants by their cultivar names. That pink shrub in the front yard isn’t a hydrangea, it’s ‘Pinky Winky.’

   7.) The No. 1 sign of a successful gardener? He or she has a compost bin or two or three in the yard.

   8.) Yeah, it’s a generalization, but yard jobs are split sharply along gender lines. The flower beds and pots are primarily female territory, while the lawn is a male-dominated dominion. Neither man nor woman likes mulching.

   9.) Gals might favor any color (no pattern that I’ve noticed), but when you ask a guy about what plant colors he likes, it’s almost always the bold, bright stuff – red, neon gold, orange, etc. Think ‘Tropicanna’ canna. Pink apparently is for grandmas, and in the guy mind, white isn’t a color at all. (For more on “Guy Gardening,” check out this past column.

   10.) Gardeners are by and large really nice, kind, caring people. You probably wouldn’t be a gardener in the first place if you didn’t have nurturing tendencies. I can’t think of any mean gardeners.