Garden

Official gardening season has begun, as it always does in Denver, on Mother’s Day. The primary reason is that usually, but not always, we are past the very cold days of winter. The second is that the Denver Botanic Gardens Spring Plant Sale is Mother’s Day weekend. I, and many other people, go every year and buy lots of plants. Then we are forced to become gardeners for the next week as we struggle to put them in the ground before they can die in their little pots on our back porches. 

Every year I swear I will show self-control and only buy what is on my list. Every year I enter the Gardens and all my good intentions evaporate. I suppose this wouldn’t happen so quickly if I actually took the time to write down my list. Or if I actually sat for five minutes and really thought about what I needed and did not need. But the Garden Sale begs for you to enter and explore and discover and how do you do that if you limit yourself to what can be listed on a piece of paper?

The Botanic Garden has introduced me to some of my favorite plants. The first year I went with my cousin, Christine, we came across a plant, Nicotiana sylvestris (flowering tobacco), which we had to buy because her maiden name and my mother’s maiden name is Sylvestre.  Also, we both had space to fill and it grows big, but mostly the name was irresistible. And so I planted it in my back yard and it grew and grew and grew. The plants grow between four and five feet high and several feet wide. The leaves are big and they have white tubular flowers. Best of all, it seems to not care very much about soil quality. Another favorite is the gazania, which is from S. Africa and is low growing with daisy-like flowers. I love the name and it is drought tolerant. 

Of course, there have been problem plants. I could not resist the adorable little plant with the pretty serrated leaves. The tag said it would grow up and have yellow flowers and it wasn’t finicky about where it was planted. I convinced Christine to buy some, too. I put it in my yard and it immediately attempted a hostile takeover of the flower bed. Not to name names here, but it was tansy. I’m pretty sure the reason Christine and her family went to live on a boat for a year was to escape it. Consider yourself warned.

For the first time this year I did not go to the garden sale. It felt very odd, like I had missed an important holiday, but I  have managed to survive. It helps that Christine did not go either. Christine has the excuse that she had classes to attend. I was busy at the barn and it just seemed a bit much this year to fit it in. On top of that, Laurence and I swear that we will be having the backyard redone, but, of course, we can’t really agree on what, exactly, needs doing. So, I think I am sticking with some vegetables and annuals this year. 

Despite not attending the sale, I still feel that the season is upon me and I have begun cleaning out my beds. A job that would be much easier if I had just done some of it last fall. So far, everything seems to be taking longer than it should and at this rate I’ll be lucky to be planting in August. Thank goodness for the perennials, they cover a multitude of ills and bad planning. 

Since the sun is still shining I think I will head outside and pull more dead leaves and debris out of the garden. Mostly though, I think I will just enjoy the fine weather.

(If you would like to read about Christine and her family's adventures the year they lived on a catamaran you can order the book her husband wrote, "Skirting the Shore," by Adrian Martin, on Amazon.)