gardening

Brian Minter writes in today’s Vancouver Sun about gardens being places of comfort. And I totally agree. Except it wasn’t very comfortable today buying the paper. Just before I entered Shopper’s drug mart, the security guard questioned me about my shopping intentions. What? These really are strange times we live in.

Escape

With the novel coronavirus upsetting our normal routines, we need gardens more than ever. We need some safe spaces to escape to, where we can rest and relax.

Unfortunately, I only have a small patio so I have to rely on containers. Of course, Brian Minter is a gardening legend in British Columbia so he’s after well-designed containers. Mine are planted with rejected plants I brought in from work; and I love all of my rescues.

Elements

The only designed pot I have contains Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima) which moves nicely with the breeze. All around it I planted purple tulips because I read too many gardening magazines and I saw this idea in one of them. The light grass contrasts nicely with the purple tulips. At least that’s the idea. The tulips aren’t out yet. I can’t wait.

Minter also mentions colours and perfumes. The only perfume I get in winter comes from my one Sarcococca. The other elements are plants which attract pollinators and LED mini-lights for extra magic.

Now, while my patio probably wouldn’t get a passing mark from Brian Minter, it’s my special place. I feel like the plants I rescued and bought are my friends. Some are tiny trees I will never be able to keep to maturity but I love seeing them grow.

I have one Styrax, Pin oak and Horse chestnut, not exactly patio pot friendly specimens. Once they grow up I will give them away.

Watering my plants also got my mind away from virus news and financial stress. Now I’m considering growing vegetables.

If you have a garden or a patio, try to add some plants. It may just give you some serenity in a crazy world. I feel great when I check on my patio plants. I think you would, too.

Brian Minter is right, gardens are places of comfort.

Disclaimer: this is a tongue-in-cheek blog post. Never ruin someone’s garden.

If you hang out online long enough, you will run into some crazy questions. Like this one: how do you ruin someone’s garden? Aha. Let’s have some fun.

Chemicals

Contact liquids

For sure the quickest way to ruin someone’s garden is to cover it in copious amounts of weed killer. I don’t want to name any one specific product but there are many available, they’re cheap and they work. If you soak everything thoroughly, you’re guaranteed success. Usually in a matter of hours.

Warning: cosmetic pesticide use isn’t allowed in British Columbia. Of course, this is a tongue-in-cheek blog post. I’m not expecting anyone to actually run out and ruin a garden but if you do, do it under cover of darkness.

Pre-emergent granular

You might also consider applying a pre-emergent granular product that forms a barrier on top of the soil. It will sterilize your garden soil and affect the most important part of garden soil: the life in the soil.

The discussion used to be about soil content. How much organic matter is in the soil, etc. But now we’re finding out that the life in your soil is crucial to success. You can quickly ruin a garden by affecting the life in its soil.

Grass seed

Dumping fast-germinating grass seed onto someone’s garden would also be a nightmare because you’d have to weed it out. And that’s not fun.

This is actually a thing in the landscaping industry. When company A loses a maintenance contract to company B, they dump a lot of expensive grass seed into beds just to mess with the new landscapers moving in. It’s hard to believe, I know.

Stop weeding

You can also ruin a garden by not weeding. Allow all weedy plants to flower and produce seeds. Since weeds are opportunistic colonizers they usually produce lots of seeds. So let them produce their seeds. They will accumulate in the soil and cause headaches for years to come.

There you have it. I hope that whoever asked the question online was kidding because need healthy gardens. One book I recommend is Dr. David Goulson’s The Garden Jungle. He wants you to stop worrying about global climate emergencies. Start with your own garden.

Would you raze your own garden? It seems like a radical waste of time but I like the idea. What if you try gardening and years later you admit to yourself that you’re not really a gardener?

This blog post was inspired by a story I had read in the Globe and Mail newspaper. The writer started gardening in her small Calgary garden and everything went well. Her husband helped with spring preparations and the garden produced all sorts of vegetables for the family.

Then they moved to British Columbia where their new neighbours were gardening all-stars. And it must have been a bit intimidating.

I have some experience with this. I was once a happy community garden plot “owner” and then I made the mistake of renting a bigger plot. It was bigger but also closer to the main building. This meant close scrutiny of my plot by a gardener on disability with time to kill. He would constantly analyze my vegetable choices and rob me of the joy of growing and experimenting with new plants. I let my plot go to some lucky person on the waiting list. And to this day I regret accepting the bigger garden plot.

Back to our family. While the husband helped in spring, he didn’t do much beyond that. Same with the kids. The wife was left to care for the garden, weeding, planting, watering, harvesting. And soon she was overwhelmed.

That’s when the family decided to quit. The husband went out and razed the garden; the wife walked out on the patio and instead of worrying about the garden, she opened up a book and relaxed. The change felt great. They weren’t really gardeners and they openly admitted it.

I totally loved reading this article because it’s different from beautiful garden magazine stories. You never read about people giving up and razing their gardens. That wouldn’t sell many gardening magazines or books, tools and seeds.