dirt / By Amy Stewart

Ready for My Close-Up

I realize that I should be setting an example for others by having a garden that looks great year-round. And I even know how to do that — I really do. I swear. I can walk around my garden and diagnose its problems and come up with perfectly reasonable and easy-to-implement plans to fix them.

For instance. Planting anything in masses makes it look better. In the front yard, I’ve begun a process of rounding up scattered plants of the same type and grouping them together. It’s easy enough to do, and it really does work. If you like some particular plant, no matter what it is, buy three or five small ones rather than one big one, clear out enough space to hold all of them at their mature size, and plant. Trust me, they’ll look great.

I know what you’re going to say. When you decide to buy that lavender or ornamental grass or ceanothus or whatever it is, you’re not yet sure that you really do like it enough to plant five of them. Maybe it will turn out to be too tender or petite or leggy or blackspot-ridden to work in your garden. So you’ll just get one for now and see how it goes, and if you really like it, next year you’ll go buy four more and plant a mass of them.

See? That’s what I always tell myself, too. Doesn’t really work for me either.

There’s also the idea of using paths, sculpture, or some kind of hardscape to pull a jumbled garden together. You can plant a meadow of wild grasses and asters in your front yard, but if you put a nice crisp brick walkway through it, it’s like you’re saying, “I meant to do this.” It’s amazing what a little contrast can do. I’ve also seen gardens that are a real mishmash except for the sculpture. Repeat the same piece of sculpture over and over in the garden, and you’ve got a theme. And by ‘sculpture’ I don’t mean marble sculptures of David; I’ve seen toy windmills, hubcaps, homemade square cement planters and even bowling balls mounted on copper pipes used as repeating elements in a garden. The repetition is a kind of structure, and breaks up the chaos just enough to make the chaos more interesting.

And then there is the entirely sensible idea of planting something that will look good year-round. I’m a sucker for a flashy plant. I like to see a show. I’ll put up with nine months of dormancy just to watch something go nuts in the summer. But don’t think I fail to see the point in year-round, sturdy, reliable green shrubs and trees and groundcovers. I do. I just don’t fall madly in love with them, and for that reason, they don’t get to come home with me.

So that leaves me with an entirely unphotographable garden and a photographer on the way. I posed a question to my Facebook friends about whether I should scramble to pull it together in the days I have left, knowing that last-ditch efforts in the garden usually look like last-ditch efforts and don’t fool anyone. One of my friends replied, “Just keep it real, pour yourself a drink and don’t do a damned thing.”

That’s the kind of advice I’m actually capable of following. Cheers, everyone.

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