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Today, I will finally talk about gardening. Spring is finally here in Portland, Oregon after a long cold, sometimes snowy and icy, winter. Don't get me wrong, we have plenty of rainy days ahead before those dryer days of July, August, and September, but leaves are unfurling, blooms are bursting forth, all sorts of plants are popping up through the earth.
I started gardening one year when I decided to take a break from writing (as if I could. Ha, I still wrote, just not every day. I offered my work for publication, production; I dreamed up new ideas). First, I had my backyard stripped of sod (the only plant back there was an old rhododendron, which I left standing). Then I had six inches of topsoil and compost. Next, I put in gravel paths. It was October. I settled in for the next nine months to design my garden, front and back. The side already had a well-established rose garden, and dead-heading the roses is what led to my wanting to garden for real.
I read books, including all of Beverly Nichols' charming garden memoirs, starting with Down the Garden Path. I watched gardening shows (which were in abundance at the time), I read gardening columns in the local papers, I went to open gardens.
After settling on a cottage garden, I started planning the color palette, and choosing flowers that would bloom throughout the year. I planted 250 bulbs in my parking strip, which already contained two pink dogwood trees. The year started with giant snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii), and the last to bloom was one of the rose bushes. So: blooms year round.
I created a moonlight garden off the end of my back deck. All white blooms to reflect the moonlight, provide a pleasant scent, and bring me joy as I sat out at night. It contained white lilacs, white roses, white iris, nicotiana, and an abundance of lamb's ears.
I made a small water feature on my deck. It was a half whiskey barrel filled with fresh water, a pump, and plants that thrive in water. It wasn't long before a frog came.
I started a mini tree nursery, planting ten trees which I would later transplant.
A fast-growing red maple was added to the backyard for shade, because there was none. In the front garden, after building a white picket fence with help from a friend, I added a weeping birch and a crepe myrtle tree.
I built an enormous pergola for shade and a separate garden room. It was twelve feet high, twelve feet wide, and twenty-four feet long. I created a roof with bamboo poles in a grid, their joints all bound with copper wire. I planted hops and clematis to climb and cover it. By the second spring, the pergola was a riot of pink clematis flowers, followed by a roof of hops for summer and fall.
I planted a blue ceanothus by the white wall of a converted garage that adjoined my backyard. It grew from gallon size to cover most of the wall by the third summer.
Flowers for the front garden included mostly pinks, blues, and lavenders in the form of three varieties of lavender, salvia, wisteria, geraniums, four-o'clocks, foxglove, toad flax (linaria), Japanese anemones, as well as herbs such as feverfew and St. John's wort.
For the window box, I grew organic edible pansies.
Because it was Portland, it took only three years to have a fully grown, lush garden, with no grass anywhere.
I'll pause here to talk about the benefits of gardening. The renowned Mayo Clinic touts the many benefits for mental health from gardening, including of course, growing your own food. Flowers are proven to lift the spirits, and when you plant and tend them yourself, even better. Digging in the dirt stirs up microbes in the soil. Inhaling these microbes can stimulate serotonin production, which can make you feel relaxed and happier. Add to this time spent outdoors, which is good for your physical and mental health. People tend to breathe deeper when outside. This helps to clear out the lungs, improves digestion, improves immune response and increases oxygen levels in the blood.
Spending time outdoors has been shown to reduce heart rate and muscle tension. Sunlight lowers blood pressure and increases vitamin D levels.
Do you garden? If not, do you find other ways to be outdoors? If you don't garden, do you enjoy visiting gardens? Like indoor plants? Like cut flowers?
While my daughter and I lived in San Diego county for six years, I did very little gardening. I planted primarily things native to the environment, but we had so little space for plants, it was not satisfying.
Once we decided to return to Portland, I began again to plan my garden. I didn't even know where we would live, whether we'd be able to find a house in Portland proper, or what kind of yard we'd have to work with. But I made lists. I started from wanting a certified backyard habitat. I assumed I'd have to create it myself. Very few homes come up for sale with established backyard habitats.
When we found a house in Portland with a big yard, I knew it was a good sign. When we actually got here, we found a blank slate. There had been a total of four trees in the Google photos, but three had been cut down. There were no flowers, no bushes. Only a lone (big, old, beautifully shaped) dogwood tree.
This photo is a google street view taken four months after we moved in. The dogwood is on the far left side. On the right side you can see we had already removed the grass, covered with wood chips, and set up a raised garden bed. The street trees had also been planted in the parking strip (by the truck).
It was October 13th when we moved in. Time to plant trees, bushes, and bulbs. We did. I obtained free street trees from the city (two Japanese cedars), which they planted and will maintain for three years. We planted a fast-growing red maple (surprise!) for shade in the north side yard where we put garden boxes for vegetables. We also planted a crepe myrtle in that area. We planted a native hazelnut in the south side yard, and a weeping flowering cherry tree in the front yard.
I planted seven rose bushes from Heritage Roses. All but one are climbers, and all are planted around the fence. I planted a rosa rugosa in one corner. It looks like an old wild rose instead of the fancier versions, but it also produces giant rose hips in the fall. When a neighbor was eliminating a climbing red rose, I brought it home and planted it so it can climb the north side fence.
This is the second spring in this house and garden, and most things are doing very well. The old dogwood didn't really bloom the first spring, but I gave it water every single week last summer, which was all it required to produce an abundance of deep pink blooms this year
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All the native plants (bushes and flowers) I planted in the south side yard for backyard habitat are thriving.
While all the bulbs came up the first spring, this year there were zero daffodils, zero tulips. The hyacinths were sparse and puny. The snowdrops and glory-of-the-snow were fewer this year, but they bloomed early and for a nice long time.
I'm planting more iris, foxglove (only around the outside of fences), more yarrow, Bee's friend, columbine, and Oregon sunshine. I'm pampering a variegated Hosta (shade plant) at the side of the house because I love shade plants, and we don't have a lot of shade yet. And I'm adding two more lilac bushes. Lilacs have been my favorite flowers since I was five years old. Last year we bought and planted four lilac bushes from the Hulda Klager Garden (she's worth googling). White, purple, variegated, and I think lavender. The two new bushes will go in the south side parking strip. One will have pink blooms, the other blue.
We'll be growing a few vegetables and herbs too. When I lived downtown and had only a balcony for a garden I grew potatoes and tomatoes. Here we have a few raised beds and can grow more.
Animals, both wild and domestic, as well as birds, bees, and other pollinators love gardens. Our chickens free range in our front and side yards for four hours every day. We have three hens, all laying eggs, and bringing us joy. One of our cats loves to go in and out several times a day, and does not kill birds. One stays indoors and enjoys looking out the windows. One is quite old, and goes for short walks, accompanied by one or the other of her humans. Squirrels and birds help make our garden a lively spot.
All of the above make me a happier person.
Engaging with you also makes me happier, so please leave a comment if you are so moved. Thanks, as always, for reading my words, for subscribing, and for sharing.
I love reading about gardening, but don’t much care for the actual work or getting my hands dirty. Our yard gets better every year, thanks to husband. We have at least 60 iris blooming right now with many colors, shapes and sizes. The peonies are in bloom. Most of the flowering trees are finished. The butterfly garden is growing as well as the lavender and Columbine garden. Looking out my window…
Thank you so much for the book rec. I love all of this! I would love to visit your garden one day.