dirt / By Amy Stewart

Showtime

A pre-autumnal to-do list for the must-impress guest

(Sept. 6, 2007)  Last month, I was in New York and I stopped by my publisher’s office to have a chat with my editor. While we were talking, my editor’s boss walked in and told me that she would be in Northern California in September. I asked her if she would like to stop by while she was in the neighborhood, and she said, “Sure! I would love to see this garden of yours.”

Gulp. Here’s the woman who, more than anyone, holds my fate in the palm of her hand. If I want them to continue publishing whatever I might decide to write about the plant world, it’s fairly important that I maintain the illusion that I know what I’m talking about. I can’t blame her for her assuming that someone who writes about gardening would have a beautiful garden, and I have probably been guilty of sending out a few carefully cropped photographs of my garden at its peak, which might have given the impression that my garden was a place worth visiting.

Naked ladies. Photo by Amy Stewart.

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I mumbled a few words about how I’ve been kind of busy this year, and how the garden still had big holes in it from last year’s freeze. But yes, of course, I told her, I would love for her to come see the garden.

I got home and looked around. The garden was a dried-up, disheveled, disorganized mess. All the low-growing perennials like yarrow, geranium, catmint and lady’s mantle had turned brown and gone to seed. Blackberry vines were creeping around corners. The front garden is in a state of transition — I’m removing some lavenders that are past their prime and rearranging everything — but this work was basically on hold until the fall. And sure enough, all the new shrubs I had bought to replace last year’s popsicles were only knee-high and nowhere near blooming. To make matters worse, the little area that I had fenced off for vegetables had been decimated by the chickens who, as it turns out, are perfectly capable of flying over a two-foot-tall fence when there’s kale to be had.

What a mess. Even if I had all the time and money in the world, I couldn’t get it whipped into shape before the end of the month. Plants don’t just bloom on command, after all. But as I looked around, I realized that there probably were a few things that I could do. So here’s my plan for getting the garden ready for its fall close-up:

Haircuts. The first thing I did was to cut back all those seedy perennials that are past their prime. Some of them might actually rebloom if I bribe them with food and water. But even if they don’t bloom, a tidy little green mound looks better than a shaggy, neglected mess.

Weeds . I’ve been keeping up with the weeds fairly well, but obviously the blackberry brambles have to go.

Water. My garden goes on a near-starvation diet in the summer. I just don’t water much. Drought-tolerant plants are the only ones that make sense in this climate anyway, so if it can’t survive a certain level of deprivation, it doesn’t belong here. But deep, regular waterings over the next few weeks will encourage the plants to get green and to take up more nutrients from the soil.

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