There is this amazing chartreuse-green haze in our landscapes. The dark background setting of our firs and cedars only enhances this slightly acrid haze. Yes, it is our big-leaf maples, the new flowers on our Madrone trees and…. All the budding, new growth holds this ephemeral lightness, including the soft redness seen in the unfurling plum-and-red maple trees.
The skies have been scudding with spring grayness intermixed with brilliant moments of intense sunlight. I am not sure that the most famous or brilliant stage designer could produce such a dramatic and hope-inspiring landscape.
The sense of unfurling from the tightness of the winter landscape moves at an incredibly fast pace. On the warm days, one senses that you can almost hear the new growth. Then the gray descends again, but if you can see past your own disappointment, those buds are still fattening and reaching out and up for the light.
Unfurling ferns
Our native sword fern is a joy to watch unfurl. Yet, it is not often used, much less celebrated, in our home gardens. I suspect that is because out in our untended gardens it is just a soggy pile of dark-green/brown fronds, falling down on the surrounding slope. Within a garden, it can hold its own on several fronts.
Except for cutting back the old fronds in March, it is maintenance-free. It is drought-tolerant, except for an intense western exposure. Yes, it can survive in soft sunshine. Look at its native range and you will see that it is a superior erosion-control plant. But until you bring it into your personal garden, its fine properties remain elusive.
I combine my sword ferns with an amusing collection of Dryopteris cultivars. Find the ones that intrigue you.
They also require nothing more than removing the old fronds so that you can clearly see and be thrilled by their unfurling fronds, which are not as hairy and tawny as the sword fern’s early fronds. Rather, they tend to be raspberry/tawny-pink to deep burgundy.
Mix in a few early crocus and snowdrop bulbs and some small specie epimediums and your almost-maintenance-free spring garden can give such a wonderful sense of enchantment as we wait, and wait, and wait for the soft allure of summer.
More than just ‘productive’
So much of the garden-advice focus these days is slanted toward the “productive” garden. It seems that we must use every available inch of soil to plant our vegetables and fruits. It is as though we do not have a garden until we can do our urban agriculture thing.
But the extended garden nourishes us beyond the planting of crops. It is a place that can shelter us, that can give to us a continuum, that can relive memories.
Did you know that, on the West Coast, you often will find in older gardens a lilac bush by the back door? Or even in the front yard? These were brought as cuttings from the Scandinavian families moving west from Minnesota and Wisconsin.
I never knew about the iconic birch trees — always in a cluster of three — that were in my childhood home’s front garden. Then I traveled to Denmark and was able to get out beyond Copenhagen to visit private homes, churches and graveyards. Always, there were three birches in these landscapes. Why? I do not know. But the connection is deeply and provocatively powerful.
May I encourage you to find your landscape/garden memories?
Urban agriculture
Meanwhile, I do want to encourage all of us to support urban agriculture — whether it is in our own gardens or working with all of the urban agriculture programs in the city, county and state.
We have a serious food crisis in our country. We must stop Monsanto from patenting all of our seeds for genetic modification. We all now recognize that processed food is contributing to our rising health-care costs.
For those of us who are so fortunate to have healthy soil, we will find room for fresh herbs, beans, peas and…. We can also make sure that there is a peony to bring awe and a rose to smell — a red-hot poker to amuse while the sunflowers climb to the sky and then feed our birds.
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