Spring Cleaning

Despite the blustery winds, I had to do some spring cleaning today. It was the first time in weeks that I had a whole day to myself, what with the remodeling in the house, work, and family visiting from out of town. The remodelers had brought a huge dumpster which looked ridiculously oversized for the two-bathroom remodel that I’m doing, and they gave the okay to put in some garden refuse.

There is something so satisfying about spring cleanup. Certainly there are the old comparisons and commentaries about life: the new life springing up from the remains of the old. I love seeing the fresh growth just starting, and the spring cleanup allows that growth to be seen. Clearing off last year’s growth from the herbaceous perennials and the hard-pruned shrubs feels like a new start.

I’d love to have a garden of herbaceous perennials where everything dies back to ground level in the winter. With simply a background of evergreen hedge, the garden would be desolate for the long winter months, but how glorious the sight of new growth in the spring. Then, with all the plants starting from the same level, looking all the same, they would develop over the months to a glorious tapestry of varied color, texture and structure. In the fall, they would return again to the same starting point.

I suppose that the English border gardens do this. I’m reading about the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll right now, and it is amazing how she combines plants in those borders. To create that balance of color, form and texture is pure genius.

Here in Albuquerque, there are plenty of plants that would fill the requirements in such an herbaceous border, although they would be different than those of the English, as I’m sure you can imagine. Agastache, Penstemon, Tulips, Eremurus, daylilies, the list is long.

A step up (in the sense of height, not of value) from the ground-level winter die-back of herbaceous perennials would be a garden of woody perennials and subshrubs. These would also have the winter return to the same level, but instead of ground level, this would be a basal framework. Again, a variety of plants could be utilized in this type of planting: Caryopteris, Perovskia, Lavender, Artemesia ‘Powis Castle’, grasses. This type of garden would have more winter interest, but a less dramatic spring entrance. It would have a similar sense of winter monotony followed by the development of individual characteristics in the summer.

I suppose that these gardens are again a metaphor for life. We all begin in the same place. We all end up the same. What we do during those frenetic days of life differs vastly, and although some catch the limelight more than others, there isn’t one that is valued particularly more than the other. Each supports the other, and shows the qualities of the other by its grouping.