Mary Agria
| Farmers’ Advance
The more you learn about gardens, the more you learn about yourself, the British gardening guru Monty Don once said. I echo that sentiment. Even a casual walk through a community of plants challenges us to reassess who we are — as a people and individuals — in the great scheme of things.
Monty Don characterizes America’s unique contribution to gardening history as the “wilderness” garden: the use of native plants to pay homage to and capture the unique beauty of our country’s prairies and meadows. I can’t imagine a gardener out there in the U.S. who would be unaware of the powerful role of cone or blanket flowers, sunflowers, phlox, columbine, lupine, veiny and sweet peas, even a whole range of cacti in the national landscape. Introduction of grasses to formal gardens is further testament to this new aesthetic when it comes to what makes a garden beautiful.
Even the Asian day lily — likely introduced in the U.S. around 1790 — has gone from exotic status to an integral part of the rural scene. A sturdy patch popping up along with iris in a North American meadow is proof positive that once a farmhouse was located there.
On a personal level, the contents of our or a stranger’s garden can say a lot about what we value, what we consider beautiful and how we view the natural world. Is your flower garden laced with veggies or other edibles — from tomato plants, cabbage and herbs to rhubarb? Whether intentionally or not, such a freewheeling garden design conveys a kind of appreciation for the diversity and interaction at work in the natural world.
Focused on native regional species rather than exotics with high demands for water or pesticides? The unspoken result is a respect for environment responsibility, the need to plant in a way that minimizes damage to the world beyond the garden.
But in the realm of plant choice, diversity also has value. Boxed hedge formality, cottage gardens and Zen or oriental elements all have their roots in other cultures. When included in our garden designs, they can subtly open us as well as others to a wider view of “beauty.”
There are no wrong answers here. A garden makes connections. It links plant with plant. It brings us into intimate contact with the earth.
A garden heals our soul. It reaches out to others. A garden cultivates all this and so much more.
Even as we move into high summer, the first fall plants are appearing on the nursery shelves. Spring bulbs and bushes for the future will soon need planting. Whether our “garden plot” is a patio or a weed patch in the backyard or a ragged grassy no-man’s land along a home’s foundations, the space is there to garden, just waiting for us. And there is no time like the present to get started.
Author of the 2006 regional best-selling novel “Time in a Garden,” Mary Agria is an 8-time first prize winner of the Michigan Garden Club’s statewide feature writing contest. Her “An Itinerant Gardener’s Book of Days,” gardening novels and books on gardening and spirituality are available online and from local bookstores.
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