Small Garden

A small garden forces one to choose. If I had a big garden, I could develop a separate gardens for different ideas or purposes. I could have a vegetable garden, a rose garden, a silver garden, a blue garden. I could have a “Fire and Ice” garden, a “Mist” garden, a garden of rhythm. There could be a garden of mounds, a rock garden. As it is, I garden in a back yard of irregular shape, about 15 x 45 feet, and a front yard that is of similar size. Although there are three distinct areas (four if you consider the five-foot side yards) to garden in, none is large enough to really indulge my gardening ideas. So I have to prioritize. I tend to try small vignettes of ideas in random areas of the garden, and the result is that the garden is a hodge-podge of ideas. Each vignette may or may not work, and not only is it a lot of work to change an entire garden if I made my entire garden one scheme, but it would be all too visible.

I love to trial plants, and I don’t collect from a single genus, not to mention species. There are some people who just grow roses, or hellebores, or hostas. Sometimes I wish I could be one of those. But what would I choose? I sometimes dream of taking the entire garden out and planting a collection of lavenders. I could have not just the standards - ‘Provence,’ ‘Grosso,’ ‘Hidcote,’ and ‘Munstead,’ but I could try lavenders like the silver leafed ‘Mitcham Gray’ or the soporific ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ I could delve into the Spanish lavenders, which although borderline here, could be fantastic. I’ve been longing to grow the dark purple L. stoechas ‘Helmsdale.’

But where would I grow other obsessions, like Madame Isaac Pereire rose, or the agastaches, or dianthus? Hmm, a garden with a background of rosemary and a foreground of dianthus. That would be nice...

Then, of course, there is the whole issue of how much work it would be to take out what is there now, in order to implement the new scheme. Could I bear to take out the oaks that were planted four years ago and are finally getting some height? Or the Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) that is finally tall enough to provide some shade? Do I have the energy to take out the four sizable Apache Plume (Fallugia paradoxa)? What about the Claret Cup cacti (Echinocereus troglochidiatus) that I grew from seed six years ago? Do they just get tossed? What gets eliminated are living creatures, and not just living creatures, they are memories. I can't change my whole scheme every year.

Right now, I’m trying to stick to predominantly native plants in the back yard. Not only do they grow vigorously without irrigation (and I get only something like 8-10” of precipitation a year), but they provide a connection with the view of the mountains, which are naturally covered in these plants (just not in the density that’s in my yard, not the variation that’s in my yard). Also, I’m trying to connect the exterior to the interior, which is, well, brown.

What this does is make me decide. Is it more important to have a spring garden of fragrant dianthus or is it more important to have a fall garden of Agastache? How much do I want to water? Just how important is it to have native plants? How much variability can I have and still have a garden? What color or colors do I need to have. Since I have a small garden, I don’t have the luxury to indulge all of these ideas, and I have to choose. It’s not easy. It forces discipline. Most of all, it forces me to limit my wants.