Finding Balance in the Garden
Mindful choices in the garden invite a balanced, thriving landscape. (Photo by Naoki Suzuki)
By Josh Reilly
What follows is not intended to keep you out of our SLV nurseries or garden centers. Just the opposite. I hope you go. I just want you to pause and think before doing it. There are dragons at the temple gate. The path to enlightenment or at least a halfway successful garden, will involve staring those dragons down.
For a garden to achieve the fullest expression of its purpose, the gardener must find balance, for instance, between the dreamy dopamine rush at the checkout in the garden center and the calm, restful zen of the established garden. Balance between desire and contentment is likely to be lost, then found again, as with freedom and responsibility. You don’t want to break the bank buying bright, cheerful posies for which you don’t really have space. Unlike all of you, I have never done that. Ever.
Perhaps the idea is to preserve balance, but not at the expense of accidental beauty. So, head out to your favorite SLV garden center, mindful of the following.
- Make the big decisions before you get there. What do you need? Where will you put it (this applies to plants and all manner of garden supplies and tools)?
- How many of your selections do you need? If you plant one of everything, nothing really stands out. No features or showstoppers (which themselves may actually be single selections). For me, this approach leads to visual exhaustion. You can buy one, try it and buy more the next year, or all at once, but plant in odd numbers greater than one. This may be an old garden design cliché, but it works. Even numbered plantings tend to make me nervous. Of course, even numbers that are the multiples of odd numbers, (six, twelve) are fine.
- What is your long-term aim? Are you starting a collection, such as roses, a favorite of many local gardeners? Do you want natives, drought-tolerant or “Mediterranean” style plantings? Remember that for the first year or so of growth, these plants need as much as or more water than anything else you grow. Do you just want to splurge on heavy drinkers? Guilty as charged, your honor. I love bamboos. Enough said.
- Finally, is there just some plant or project you’ve been wanting to start for your own reasons and none of the rest of this matters to you. Nothing wrong with this. We garden to express ourselves and create beauty. Listen to your muse.
Having grilled yourself thoroughly, feel free to march into the garden center confidently with verve, insouciance, even. Head straight for the section where your choice(s) are displayed. Don’t stop. Walk right over there and pick them up first before doing anything else. Hold the pot (or basket or, sigh, pushcart) in your hands. Thus encumbered, you will be less tempted to stray into the “Forbidden Forest” (everywhere else in the garden center). Now, go get in line and stay there until your transaction is complete. Why? Because there, in line is where you stand behind your choices, boldly and without apology. And, it’s where you part with your money. Are you satisfied with the epistemology that got you here? Are your selections going home to a perfect, welcoming spot, where they will complement their neighbors beautifully for a long time. Or will they stay in pots, in that big collection of borderline root bound plants that are starting to crowd the chairs off your deck and make your paths impassable?
To put it in terms many Santa Cruzans will understand, this is where the shore break hits the backwash, with a big, wet slap. Visions are tested or made new. Here, you must decide whence comes the ancient spark of creativity, in the moment of hope and desire or in the contentment achieved after so many past such moments.
Josh Reilly, aka Uncle Skip, writes about seasonal gardening from his home in beautiful Ben Lomond, California.
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