Manolo for the Home

When I think of gardens, the first image that springs to mind is clusters of colorful flowers, bright greenery, stone pathways, and possibly a fountain or two. The greenspace that exists fully formed in my thoughts is meant to be enjoyed actively…it’s the domain of walkers and sniffers and pollinators and diggers. Take a slice out of your nearest arboretum or botanical garden, and you get the idea.

But there are other gardens out there meant to be savored in different ways. My college, for instance, had a small garden created specifically for the blind to enjoy. I’d close my eyes and walk through it, smelling the various fragrances that wafted my way and feeling the leaves and flowers of plants chosen for their tactile pleasantness.

Another sort of garden, the moon garden, is meant to be enjoyed at night, usually from the comfort of a bench or porch swing. White and light-colored blossoms glow in the moonlight, and the sounds of nature seem amplified when darkness is all around you.

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I’m lucky in that I can sit here at my desk and stare out of my window into my extremely green backyard. The plus is that I can see flowers and shrubs and trees and a baby rhubarb and broccoli seedlings. The minus is that I can also see the dandelions. Now, personally, I like dandelions…on other people’s properties, that is. They’re pretty, but give them an inch of your lawn and they’re going to take over the whole thing. Grrrrrr!

Not everyone is so lucky, however, which means that city rats and apartment dwellers have to improvise when it comes to getting a nature fix. There’s not always time to get to the botanical garden or hike the nearest mountain range, but there’s almost always time for a little retail therapy.

Multi-colored metal says fall to me, but it may say something different to you. But at a foot and a half square and two inches deep, I have to wonder how heavy these leaves are.

Custom framed golden leaf prints by S. Hadley…whoever that is…represent a lighter option.

Is it weird that I can’t figure out whether these are plates or plain old circles? I love putting plates on the wall, even though plenty of them are a pain in the tuckas to hang.

But wait…am I being too literal? Too literally leafy? Personally, I like this:

Right this second, someone, somewhere is thinking about how if they could have anything at all in the world, they’d pick a giant ent face that is poised to vomit half-digested birdseed all over the poor sparrows congregating at the base of the tree.

Sure I only just wrote about these fun forest faces — that’s what the manufacturer calls them — but I couldn’t resist showing you this one, which looks as if it had a rough night on the town with the Birch Boys and is desperately searching for an antacid or a little hair off the dog…anything to wash the taste of birds out of its mouth.

Tell me — do these freak you out as much as they freak me out?

I’ve seen tree faces around town, and nearly every time I encounter one I’m left the worse for wear. I inevitably flinch or startle or jump, making whomever I’m walking with laugh hysterically as I attempt to regain my composure. Then again, I’m also the first of my clique to get the screaming heebies when Halloween decorations start going up.

That’s just NOT what I need to see when I’m walking home from the train station at one a.m. after a great party. I mean, really now, I’m already on edge, trotting around by myself in the darkness.

Maybe I’m in a minority here, but I like trees just because. I don’t need to give them creepy faces to make them funnier or give them personality. All the trees in my life have plenty of personality already — in fact, I spent most of fall raking up said personality!

When you buy a house, it oftentimes comes with a yard. As it happens, one of the selling points of my particular abode was the lush garden that was included in the purchase price. Unfortunately, the property went untended for much of the summer and autumn while we waited to close, and we arrived at our new home to find it looking rather gnarly and overgrown. C’est la vie.

On one hand, this was a pain — neighbors are more neighborly when they don’t have to look at a rough and tumble yard every time they step outside, and yard work isn’t exactly the idyllic activity that back-to-nature guidebooks would have you believe it is. On the other hand, the scrappy lawn and overgrown flora gave me and The Beard the perfect excuse to drop wads of cash at various garden supply shops.

Long story short, that’s how we found ourselves pricing shrubberies, learning about plant food, and placing an order for the delivery of what seemed at the time like a reasonable amount of mulch. The mulch was to arrive in the afternoon of the day following our foray into the land of bushes and trees.

I was pretending to work on various projects on the day in question when I heard the unmistakable sound of a largish truck backing into my driveway. After peeking out of the living room window I came to an inescapable conclusion: Two cubic yards is a lot of mulch…especially when it is sitting smack dab in the middle of one’s driveway.

We chose an organic mulch made of things like bark, wood chips, leaves, pine needles, or grass clippings, but we could have opted for an inorganic mulch made of fabric, plastic, rocks, foil, or ground rubber. According to the Clemson Extension:

Mulching is a very important practice for establishing new plantings, because it helps to conserve moisture in the root ball of the new plant until the roots have grown out into the surrounding soil. The growth rate and health of trees and shrubs increases when there is no competition for water and nutrients from weeds. Mulch also helps to prevent tree trunk injury by mowers and trimmers. Newly planted trees require a circle of mulch 3 to 4 feet in diameter. Maintain this for five years.

Mulch entire beds of shrubs, trees, annuals, herbaceous perennials and ground covers. How often mulch needs to be replenished depends on the mulching material. Grass clippings and leaves decompose very fast and need to be replenished frequently. Inorganic mulches such as gravel and pebbles rarely need replenishing. As the plants grow and fill in the bed areas, less and less mulch is needed.

So there you have it — more than I ever knew (or wanted to know) about mulching before I ended up with a patch of dirt of my very own. I’m off to move the mulch away from my house, as it can act like a landbridge that lets subterranean termites cross areas treated with anti-bug goo. Now if I could only get this $@#$! wheelbarrow assembled before all of my fragrant mulch is spread throughout the neighborhood via the wind, things will be golden.

I have a friend who grew up in the wilds of New York City and subsequently cannot stand grass. He feels that it is a useless indulgence and far more trouble than it’s worth. I can’t say I agree with him 100%, because there really is nothing as lovely as stepping out barefoot into a nice patch of fresh, springy grass. But now that I have a lawn of my own — a lawn that has grown steadily more sickly looking as winter has dragged on –I have come to appreciate his point.

While sipping iced tea and watching The Beard navigate our property with a push mower is indeed an entertaining diversion, he really ought to be lazing on the porch with yours truly. In thinking about this, I was forced to ask myself why we even have lawns. While I wouldn’t want to give over the entirely of my backyard space to herbs and creepers and flowers, my front yard doesn’t get much foot traffic. Here’s what I discovered:

Do you know where the American suburban obsession with lawn grass and big yards comes from? European royalty. Status. The idea of having a wide open space that you own but do nothing with except grow grass is part of value system that traces its roots to medevil feudalism, the whole concept of the King’s lands.

So what can one plant in lieu of the usual greenstuff? I found some wonderful suggestions at Hot Gardens and elsewhere:

• Ivy
• Chamomile
• Moss
• A hedge maze
• Lantana
• Mint (grown responsibly)
• Ryder or woolly thyme
• Clover
• Dichondra
• Ornamental grasses
• Alpine geranium

If none of these appeal to you, do a search for “treadable ground cover” or “grass alternatives” for even more pretty, easy-to-maintain ideas.