Get Planting

During my marriage, our side yard was converted into a nursery for young plants too small to survive in the "landscape."  (Read: Doomed to certain death by lawnmowers, deer, rabbits, mice, and woodchucks.)  Over the past seven years, the nursery has become, by any estimation you care to use, crowded.

Some of these plants are now nearly 6 feet tall.  Many are 3-4 feet wide.  We're talking somewhere between 20-30 plants in a VERY small space.  Lots of digging, my friends.

The sheer magnitude of the project is compounded by my relative ignorance of woody ornamentals.  I don't know what half of these things are, how big they are expected to grow, when they prefer to move, whether or not they have tap roots, or how to wrap a root ball.  For a while, my fear of doing the wrong thing paralyzed me and I did . . . absolutely nothing.

Finally I realized the plants were so constrained that if I didn't move them now they would all be garbage come spring anyway.  I might as well try moving them to more suitable locations and save some rather than lose them all.

I started with the area housing my little beech tree, three smallish bushes, a magnolia that should have been moved last year, a very established rhododendron, and my garage.  Out came the bushes.  Out came the beech, which promptly turned brown and made me think I'd killed it.  As it's been a couple weeks, the buds are still firmly attached, and the trunk is still green, I think it might actually survive.  Yay!

I have plugged away, moving 1-2 plants a day nearly every day.  In the past few weeks I have moved five small trees, around ten small shrubs/dwarf varieties, two giant clumps of grasses (one with the help of my burly--and very generous!--neighbor), and ten ground-cover types (sweet William and phlox mostly).

I also planted a butterfly bush my dad reluctantly gave me.  "Do you honestly think you need any more plants?" he asked.

"Of course I don't need any more plants!" I responded brightly.  "But I've always wanted a butterfly bush!"

It's going to look fabulous in the front yard near the Heptacodium: lots of gorgeous fall color!

To be brutally honest, no real plantsman would think I should be attempting this project.  It's not my thing.  I don't have the training or even the physical skills to do it successfully.  Sometimes I doubt the wisdom of  the undertaking.

What I lack in skill, however, I make up for with sheer grit and determination.  And darn it, the plants so far seem to be doing pretty well!  Aside from the beech, none of them are showing any signs of transplant stress.  Pretty impressive considering the vast majority of them were bare-rooted.  (I mentioned my inability to wrap a root ball, right?!)  I'm staking the trees with three well-placed stakes, and they all look straight . . . or as straight as they can look when they've been crunched so tightly that most of them have at least one flat side!

And if my design works as planned, each plant will have just enough room to reach maturity without feeling trapped while simultaneously enabling me to reduce my mowing significantly.  (Anybody have some wood chips they want to unload?!)

So here's the point.  (There really is one!)  Sometimes we can become paralyzed by fear: of failure, of embarrassment, of ridicule, of insufficiency.  Our perceived inability to "do it right" keeps us from doing anything at all.

My friends, I pray better things for us!

Let us not sit idly by, watching our precious gifts being overrun by weeds and brush, becoming so crowded that they become misshapen and useless.  NO!

Let us, rather, stop worrying about doing it "perfectly" and get to the business of doing.  Get the shovel, put on your gloves, take a deep breath, and dig.  Put your gifts out there for all to see.  If you find there isn't quite enough sunshine--or too much!--move them.  If they look like they're too small--or too large!--to thrive where they are, move them again.

And if, after a year or two, you find that the plant you thought would be so gorgeous has turned into a gangly scarecrow of a thing, RIP IT OUT!  Start over.  Put something else in its place.

There is no such thing as a failed garden: they are all works in progress.  The only failure is in not planting the garden in the first place.