Bloom Where You Are Planted

This is probably the most important adage of the garden. For you, as the gardener, to commune with the sense of your garden. The location which has its own speech and its own beauty.

We often miss that in our modernist thinking that everything will bend to our will. That is a short-lived illusion. And an illusion which masks the incredible experience of exploring the mysteries hidden in the beauty of the natural creation.

We think we will make the alkaline nature of our soil acid. As though the puny amendments of peat moss and sulfurs will rectify the ancient limestone minerals in the makings of our soil. Eventually, the realities will laugh at such efforts. Not this year, and maybe not the next, but eventually.

That is not to say we ought not help the earth be the best that it can be. We should. That is what makes us gardeners. We nurture, we cultivate, we wonder, and we are rewarded. Not that I am trying to discourage any budding Capability Browns out there. I cannot help but think that even Capability had his knowledge of what he what working with rather than against.

So while I read Patrick Roger’s Scenic Nursery blog and wish for some of that California fairyland beauty ( that is what it struck me as, in my visit long ago), and have wished, often, for such things as Camellias, I know I would miss the sharp contrasts of the changing seasons. I remember the amazement I once had at a Westerner’s complaint that Ohio was so green. Like that was a bad thing!

But we learn to appreciate the specialties of our own part of the world. And that is as it should be. And to appreciate, rather than envy, those of other places. Being what we are, we shall always have our favorites.

And this is what reminiscence is made of, the smell of the evergreen forest in the far north, the humid heat and sweet smells of a mountain in Georgia, the inimitable fall fragrance and overwhelming color of deciduous woodland. Unbelievable bloom in the desert, scent of roses on the wind, there is so much to enjoy…. and your own part of the world can be the place to bloom.
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By the way, my lonicera fragrantissima finally gave forth its bloom, though reduced and late. Just lovely.