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Gleanings from the Editor
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Gleanings from the Editor
In her column this month, Dominique Inge talks
about serendipity in the garden — the wonderful combination
of surprises that help make gardening fun and rewarding. Reading
her words made me start noticing the good surprises that came
in my garden this year.
For some reason, this was a great year for
volunteers. Although I always have a good supply of volunteer
dandelions, elm trees, and chinaberries, which I mow, pull up
and curse, this year I had several surprisingly lovely volunteers.
Last year Katie Stone generously shared a basil
plant with me. It was a basil that has self-hybridized in her
garden through the years and created an unusual plant. It is
tall with rounded leaves that have tooth-like edges. The flavor
is minty as well as “basily.” I enjoyed the plant all
summer and went into winter intending to save seeds, take cuttings,
or do something to continue its life. Of course, I didn’t.
I let the plant freeze and assumed that was the end of it.
This spring, however, I found a young “Katie”
basil coming up in a flower bed. It had managed to seed itself
and was doing very nicely. It is still doing nicely and has been
a delightful plant all summer. I’m torn between trying to
propagate it and just letting it do its own thing.
A purple basil planted itself in the middle
of my tomato bed. It is said that tomatoes and basil make good
companion plants. I guess my tomatoes needed a companion. It
has been the best looking basil in the garden this year.
Purple basil is famous for reseeding. My sister
has it coming up all over her gravel driveway every spring in
north Texas.
It wasn’t just basil that popped up unexpectedly
in the garden. About three years ago, I planted an annual salvia
— Coral Nymph — in the back yard.
It is a lovely light pink-coral color that
bloomed nicely and froze back as it is supposed to do. I didn’t
give it much thought until some unknown salvia appeared in one
of my beds this summer. Sure enough, it was Coral Nymph come
back for an encore. About four plants came up and bloomed like
crazy all summer. I pinched off the dead seedheads and threw
them about. I’m hoping they will come back again when conditions
are right.
I had another volunteer salvia as well, and
this one is a complete mystery to me. One plant came up in a
big pot where Italian parsley was growing. Another plant came
up on the opposite side of the yard in a flowerbed full of perennials.
The foliage on the salvia was typical of annuals — full
and short with bright green pointy leaves. The flowers, though,
were anything but typical. They were bright red with a touch
of neon fuchsia. Wonderfully glowing blossoms that lasted a long
time.
I have no idea where those salvia came from.
I’ve never had flowers like that in my garden. I hope they
come again since they are so beautiful, but I’m very grateful
for this appearance in any case. Which brings me to the point
of this story: some of the greatest joys of gardening are unplanned
and unexpected.
Gardening is, after all, a living process.
It is not like home decorating, where you put a couch in place
and there is stays, unchanging, until you move it somewhere else.
A garden is the result of the labors of the gardener — plus
the labors of the birds, the bugs, the wind, the rain, and the
sun. Seeds blow in and are carried in by birds. Water washes
plants from one spot to another. Seeds hide and wait for just
the right conditions before they make themselves known as lovely
volunteers.
I like to think that if I were a more careful
gardener, one who plucked every weed and cultivated every plot,
I wouldn’t get the benefit of nature’s whimsey in my
garden. It is part of my rationale for letting things slide.
On the other hand, if I didn’t get out
there and plant and water and mess around, I wouldn’t have
all the plants that I love. It has to be a combination of the
gardener’s art and nature’s editing.
For a long time I tried to make all the decisions
about what went into the garden. I wanted azaleas, so I planted
them. Of course, in my alkaline clay soil, azaleas did not flourish.
In fact, they languished until I gave up and tossed them into
the compost pile. They served well in the compost, and I got
smart enough to plant salvias instead. Now I have lovely blossoms
all summer, and in the spring I rely on iris, roses and bulbs
for bright colors.
Once I started working with nature, she started
working with me. One of the benefits is the nice volunteers that
are thrown in for free once in a while.
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