Getting The Gardening Bug
From the time that I had a place to do it, I wanted to grow things, mostly flowering plants. I didn’t know anything about them; I didn’t come from a family “proper” gardeners. My Mother planted a lot of annuals and bulbs and there was always fresh parsley to cut for garnishes when my parents entertained, but that was about it.
I’d like to say that this is evidence of my very early interest in horticulture…but I suspect that it was only a photo-op for my Mother…
After growing up in eastern Washington and graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle, and having absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do for a living, I spent a year in Norway…and then ended up in New York City working for Pan American Airways as a stewardess on the newly inaugurated 747s flying to Europe, South America and the Caribbean.
That was far more eye-opening than glamorous, and I eventually escaped from New York to Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia where I lived with my first husband. We had a very small, and very charming 18th century farmhouse more or less in the country; it was in no way grand.
From the time that I had a place to do it, I wanted to grow things, mostly flowering plants. I didn’t know anything about them; I didn’t come from a family “proper” gardeners. My Mother planted a lot of annuals and bulbs and there was always fresh parsley to cut for garnishes when my parents entertained, but that was about it.
I’d like to say that this is evidence of my very early interest in horticulture…but I suspect that it was only a photo-op for my Mother…
After growing up in eastern Washington and graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle, and having absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do for a living, I spent a year in Norway…and then ended up in New York City working for Pan American Airways as a stewardess on the newly inaugurated 747s flying to Europe, South America and the Caribbean.
“Translating their information and advice to the American climate was not straightforward, to say the very least.”
The garden space I had to develop consisted of two acres of uncultivated heavy acidic clay. There was a small wood behind and open fields surrounded us. The summers were hot and humid and the winters usually had at least some snow. It was, however, a much milder climate than what I had grown up with on the Washington/ Idaho border…
I knew nothing, but, like a lot of Americans who aspired to garden at the time, I avidly read English gardening books. Trying to translate the information and advice to apply to the American climate was not straightforward, to say the very least.
To my dismay, the flower borders I had so carefully chosen to emulate the English borders pictured in my books, had finished flowering long before their English counterparts.
It wasn’t until I visited gardens in Hampshire while staying with my first husband’s sister that the penny dropped and I finally realized that the earlier and much more intense heat of the Philadelphia climate (Philadelphia is at the same latitude as Barcelona…) caused very accelerated flowering from what I had in mind…
Still, England was, for me the mecca of gardening and all things garden-related. Whenever I in was in London I would go to Hatchard’s, that wonderful book store in Piccadilly and drool over their enormous selection of gardening books.
(There was also a postal service, sadly no longer available, called a “book rate” for posting large or heavy things cheaply across the Atlantic by ship. I took full advantage of it and built up a large stock of garden reference sources.)
“I was wholly and happily besotted and out of control.”
Hugh Johnson’s 1979 book entitled The Principles of Gardening had an enormous influence on me. I have only now to leaf through the pages to see the photographs and read the paragraphs about plants I wanted to grow and the aspects of gardening I wanted to learn. It was a very aspirational book (certainly for a young woman who had grown up in the arid environs of the far west)
..and I aspired.
It was a photograph of the sumptuous, tightly packed petals of the Bourbon rose called “Souvenir De La Malmaison”, that sent me over the edge into a love affair with old-fashioned roses. I set about willy-nilly creating a large (over 40 shrub) collection. I was wholly and happily besotted and out of control.
Hugh Johnson’s 1979 book entitled The Principles of Gardening had an enormous influence on me. I have only now to leaf through the pages to see the photographs and read the paragraphs about plants I wanted to grow and the aspects of gardening I wanted to learn. It was a very aspirational book (certainly for a young woman who had grown up in the arid environs of the far west)
..and I aspired.
It was a photograph of the sumptuous, tightly packed petals of the Bourbon rose called “Souvenir De La Malmaison”, that sent me over the edge into a love affair with old-fashioned roses. I set about willy-nilly creating a large (over 40 shrub) collection. I was wholly and happily besotted and out of control.
“Gardens are, after all, three-dimensional; four-dimensional if you consider time.”
I tried all sorts of things. I would read about some family of plants: Japanese irises, Tree peonies, native wildflowers and then I would set about trying to grow them. I learned plants by seeing their roots and their growth habits. Some were failures, but a lot succeeded and my garden grew.
At the same time that I was learning to garden, I began to paint. I had always been very attracted to color and, as my eye was trained, I began to really see pattern, texture, and balance in my compositions—on the canvas and in the garden…..or not.
I was eventually accepted into a university art program as a painter and, as part of that was introduced to sculpture. That was a very important aspect of my training in that it taught me to explore and to trust my sense of spatial weight.
Gardens are, after all, three-dimensional; four-dimensional if you consider time.
I began to understand that those elements, plus the combining of color and texture were what made garden planning so very challenging, thrilling when it was right and so disappointing when it was not…
It was that happy coincidence of art and horticulture that started the development of my garden philosophy.
