Tenacity
A Garden Reflection
It’s that time again!
Tenacity: a Garden Reflection
My daily tasks included the relentless displacement of unworthy, ungracious, and useless to preserve the purposefully planted. Clients relied on me to distinguish and paid me well for my skill in perennial gardening. Renovating landscapes on the verge of being lost to vagrants required tugging and hauling, but hand-weeding meant close work — kneeling or sitting — to coax rogue plants, roots, and all, and minimize damage to rightful denizens. The task is most efficient when the soil is moist and well-drained, early in the season, since the opportunists grow lush and persist alongside their legitimate bed-mates.
I sometimes scratched the bed with a scuffle hoe to loosen surface weeds when the ground was dry. I avoided the application of harmful herbicides, and it’s futile to pull deep-rooted weeds. Fragments of Curly Dock and Canadian Thistle left behind by digging and pulling are sure to sprout from root buds. Chickweed and Purslane seed capsules pop and disperse. Twining Bindweed, kin to the Morning Glory, weaves into the garden’s fabric.
I don’t argue with Christopher Lloyd’s classic quote:
"Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find in it a kind of soothing monotony. It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative's latest example of unreasonableness.” ― Christopher Lloyd, The Well-Tempered Garden
My white Nissan pickup had a cap with windows on three sides for access to tools, containers of perennials, and shrubs. Two removable shelves gave me an upper level to slide flats of bedding plants in and out. My region extended from Chestnut Hill and Germantown in Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Wyndmoor, Malvern, and north to Upper Bucks County. I relished the freedom of working solo, but as my business grew, I appreciated regular help. When weeds encroached in their flower beds, customers clamored and I consulted. I could supply the remedy, and the labor, and had the skill. I provided the perennials, herbs, roses, bedding plants, and cut flowers my clients craved. If the weeds were bad and the growing season was well along, I proposed to renovate the space by pulling and digging, removing shrubs and perennials to re-use them in my new design. I recommended post-planting care and seasonal maintenance to forestall the reappearance of the indefatigable intruders.
Persistence and tenacity urged me through this second career as a landscape gardener. The strength and resilience I earned during those fifteen years served me in rehabilitation after my hemorrhagic stroke at age fifty-seven, and that tenacious spirit has gotten me through the subsequent fifteen years.
© Mary Ellen Gambutti
I really enjoyed this article Mary. I have only recently started doing some gardening but it has brought me a lot of joy. All the best!
So impressive! I admire your physical work in landscaping as an artist and as a woman in the field. Sharing your experience will inspire others as you write it back to life.