Last weekend we enjoyed the annual garden tour put on by the Richardson Women’s Club. We always come away with ideas as well as motivation and inspiration to take our little piece of Eden to the next level.
Something I noticed this year perhaps for the first time – or just experienced in a new way – was that some people like free-form, almost wild gardens, and some like more tidy, formal environments. This year’s tour featured both. Some gardens were full of flowers and shrubs almost on top of each other as if competing for dominance and attention, and some were more intentional in the separation and showcasing of individual plants. In the latter, you could get a good look at the shape and color of each plant, and the former gave a sense that experiencing the entirety of the garden was the point.
A dozen years ago we traveled to France and saw the same trends in two of the most famous gardens in the world. The gardens at the home of impressionist painter Claude Monet in Giverny were a beautiful bedlam of flowering plants coming up everywhere and spilling out all over each other and onto the gravel paths. In contrast, the gardens at the Palace of Versailles were orderly and precise with carefully manicured plants standing at attention behind decorative hedge rows and edging.
Aristocrats at Versailles might criticize Monet’s garden as being undisciplined and wild, while lovers of the Monet environment would say the Versailles gardeners have tamed the wild joy out of nature.
We have both order and chaos at our place. We’ve outlined our beds with metal edging, but with our house being square and symmetrical, our beds are the opposite: curvy and randomly placed. While the landscaper who helped us choose plants before we moved in created some initial symmetry in the front yard, that’s been undone by time, weather and the reality of our location.
For example, the nandina on either side of the front porch are about as uniform in size and shape as the kids in a sixth-grade class. Japanese maples mirroring each other at the front corners of the house fell victim to the weather and lack of shade from the new live oak trees. The maples have been replaced by plants that can tolerate what’s turned out to be very different conditions at each corner. Now that the live oaks are tall and shady, it might be time to give maples another try.
Meanwhile, we have a simple philosophy in our garden: If it blooms, it stays; if not, it gets moved for a tryout somewhere else. As such, we’ve moved lots of plants over the past 14 years: crepe myrtles, camellias, tomatoes, cannas, roses, grapevine, lamb’s ear, sage, fire bushes, turk’s cap, butterfly bushes, irises, the list goes on and on. We don’t give up on our plants or ourselves easily. A master gardener might save us some work and expense by showing us the best plants and best locations, but I think we do fine on our own.
Sometimes plants work out without much help, while some need patience and a good nudge with fertilizer or pruning. Still others just appear without any selection or planting by us. That’s mostly because the other inhabitants of the yard – squirrels, rabbits, birds, insects – are busy out there as well. Birds poop new plants into existence and squirrels will dig up flowers we’ve planted and bury pecans in the holes. Even fire ants have their say; they churn up the dirt, burying grass and flowers under their mounds. Chased away with chemicals, they leave behind hard, dense dirt that must be raked out before anything will grow there again.
Perhaps I noticed the tour gardens in a new way this year because I’ve come to a time of life when I want both freedom and order, wildness and predictability, energy and calm. I don’t need an agenda for everything I do or a map for everywhere I go; I don’t mind some detours and side trips, but I do want some assurance I’ll reach my destination – whether physically or spiritually.
I also don’t mind surprises. One of the gardeners on the tour, a successful businessman and philanthropist with the means to create his own Versailles, sowed a wide slope descending from the street down to a creek with native wildflowers and put in some gravel paths so folks could walk through and enjoy it. It was unconventional and unexpected, and I enjoyed it very much.