A Quick End To My First Garden

Just a month after bidding farewell to the Overbrook Garden, my first true attempt at a garden, a tragedy has befallen it and half of it is already laid to waste. I expected to do occasional drive-bys and watch the garden slowly change and possibly fade under the stewardship of new and inexperienced hands. Perhaps the new owners would maintain the enthusiasm they showed for the garden at the time of purchase and it would grow into their own.

But their real-estate agent called this week and asked if we failed to disclose any problems with the sewer line. It seems that the drains in the house started spewing dirt. The whole line would have to be excavated and re-laid, which means a good deal of the front beds in the path of destruction.
I can’t imagine how I would have reacted if we had stayed and the failed sewer line had been our curse. I would have tried to rescue as many plants as possible, but such an undertaking at this time of the year would most certainly have led to many casualties. I can’t imagine the new owners even attempted to save the Salvias, Hellebores, Spegillias, Geraniums and numerous other perennials that were just starting to look established.
I drove by today and the front yard was a wreck of uplifted roots and ugly orange clay brought up from the trenches. I wonder if it will just be seeded with lawn in the spring. Well, as I previously stated (with thanks to Joan Didion), Goodbye To All That…Pictured: The Overbrook Garden in happier, infancy years, with Ms. Mama to Be and Baby Belly E.

From Scratch: The Lutherville Garden

I begin, alone, staring out on some despicable forsythia, a few pines (or are they spruces? I’ve had little experience with such evergreens), and a whole lot of bamboo, pachysandra, and ivy. I rake fallen leaves from a weedy silver maple into outlines for beds and kick rotted green walnuts into the stream. As I play with the shapes of these tentative beds, deer peer out from the woods and survey my handy work, salivating with anticipation of spring’s fresh, tender young shoots.
The beds I have outlined are expansive – silly, really, since I now have diminished energies and finances and should probably stick to a front bed of inpatients and dusty miller. Gone are the well established Hellebores, sages, and shrubs thriving in a Bambi-free zone. I am embarking into futility. But even the simple act of creating beds from fallen leaves, impermanent and wind-blown as they may be, sustains and carries over the feeling that I am creating. I am beginning. And I am in love with the water, branches, and earth.