So, we must spring into action. No more dreaming time left - the garden is demanding our attention. You may try to ignore the bursting growth, believing that you really will get to it early next week, but then that day comes, and the notorious spring showers are beating on the windowsills.
Real horticulture and fine gardening are true anomalies in this age of instant everything. Garden centers have emphasized this perceived need for immediacy. It is possible, in a one-stop-shop, to fill your garden beds, patios and decks with furniture, pre-planted pots of seasonal "color," doo-dads and whirlygigs, bulbs in pots so it looks as though you did your bulb planting last fall and winter and a vast selection of sure-fire blooming plants. The cost for this immediacy is high in dollars for the consumer.
Before the concept of garden centers, there were nurseries offering their plants, seeds and a few garden tools and pots. Look to the word - nursery- "something that fosters, develops or promotes." Now, more and more nurseries are moving toward the garden center concept. At some nurseries the garden décor items outnumber the plant offerings.
Historically, gardens have reflected the social and cultural norms of their period. The Victorian gardens with their exotic plants and intricate bedding out schemes tell us about the new age of plant explorations, and the Victorians' need for tight social control.
Looking at the classic 1950 gardens in the old Sunset Western Garden books and magazines, their design spoke about the new outdoor living, with hard surfaces for recreation, barbecuing, and lounge chairs. The available plant palette was narrow, for the garden had become another room to the house, rather than a place for plants.
Currently one of the big fashions in garden-making is to have exotic plants from all the bio-regions of the world. Does the word globalization come to mind? Another popular trend is the containerized garden - think condos and 24/7 lifestyles. This sort of garden is "made" in one weekend.
None of these trends is inherently bad unless one succumbs to them blindly. If you love to dash about and be the first on your block to have the latest big, bold and splashy exotic - if this approach to making your garden brings the greatest pleasure - go for it.
But if you only feel that you should be planting spiky, bold, marginally tender exotics, save yourself the trouble. As many gardeners found out with the hard freezes this year, the "tender exotic" look turned to a sodden mush pile.
So this takes us back to the issue of real horticulture. Gardens are evolving living organisms. They mature and the horticultural needs change. Just cramming in more plants and décor items won't address the needs of the organism. Time and study spent with other horticulturists can be as rewarding as filling your garden wagon.
Love of gardening can take you out into larger worlds of intrigue, such as plant-hunting, botany, and history (see "The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants," by Anna Pavord). But this month, our own gardens are demanding our time and attention.
Turn the cell phone OFF. Get back to the intricacies that your garden offers to you. Allow yourself to indulge in the pleasures and surprises that your garden can give to you. For a purely blissful scent, almost nothing matches that of the warming earth.
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