When Gardeners and Their Gardens Grow Old

It is a fact of life. Like weeds. You don’t even notice how it creeps up on you, but suddenly it is there and it must be dealt with:

Age

Two things begat this post, the fact that the heat has forced me to stay indoors and updating a post that had very good advice for older gardeners.

Advice that I must now seriously take for myself.

Heat

The heat advisories would have been laughed at and lightly dismissed in my younger years as a gardener. Today I did not even venture out in the morning because yesterday’s piddling work was too much and I don’t want to repeat the experience.

Yes, I had to recover from watering my containers in the high humidity and 90 degree temps that feel like triple digits.

Weeding and tending the vegetable garden will have to wait for more reasonable temperatures.

I’m Old

If I was thinking of “getting the garden ready” when I wrote that post of garden advice for older gardeners, that day has now arrived.
When gardens and gardeners age, change comesOld Gardeners Should...

I hate the idea of giving up my large yard and dreams of flower gardens, but reality is that something MUST change. It doesn’t help my state of mind that I saw the movie, ‘Iris‘, starring Judy Dench. It drove home the fact that aging people too often procrastinate necessary changes to their living.

Even when health problems or losses don’t necessitate such changes, other circumstances often do.

A List Of Garden Changes

Things I see that must change:

1. I need more help- hired help must be found next year. For the first time in my life I think I will need to engage someone to occasionally do some of the chores.
2. Spring is more a time to pay attention to pruning than planting. A mature garden looks unkempt if bushes are growing will-nilly.
3. A more permanent solution to the fieldstone walk. Polymeric sand  for the cracks between the stones.
4. Redesign garden space near the house.
5. Lots of other things that I will need to brainstorm this winter.

Are you planning for the day when the garden demands more than you might be willing to give it? Has aging interfered with how you dreamed your garden would look?

What’s going on in your stage of life and how does that affect the way you plan to landscape?