Wild Garden Questions
Go Gentle by Maria Semple is a stunning, stunning, stunning book, and I’ve loved all of the philosophical questions woven through the book, even more once you learn how she got into philosophy.
On page 60, she’s watching the ground crew at her workplace tend the library’s massive garden. They switch out the annuals to go with the season, and she muses: “The efficiency and finished product never failed to impress. But ultimately, it felt airless and safe. Me, I’m a God’s-will girl.”
Of course, you need to pause and ask yourself: Are you a wild garden sort of person or a tended garden? Does “tended” automatically mean airless and safe? Does “wild” automatically give you room to breathe?
Me, I’m definitely a tended garden sort of person. I would rather have safe over surprises.
How about you?
3 comments
Oooh, interesting question. I remember the first time I realised they pulled out the flowers in public places once they had bloomed and wilted, and replaced them with something else. That seemed so wrong! Too manufactured. Artificial.
But I’m not into completely wild either. Our garden (on a hill) here is filled with plants that bloom and fade at different times of the year, but don’t require replanting. It looks more natural. I like that.
Hmmmm… I like to plant a garden and use mostly native plants. I am a Darwin gardener–I tend my gardens but I let things get wild and cottage-y, if I’m lucky. The dirt at my house is unforgiving (walnut trees, jumping worms, no amount of amending the soil sticks), but I’m thrilled when things survive. I get more of that stuff. Yep, Darwin gardener.
I’m so excited the book is great! I loved “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” But was meh about “Tomorrow Will Be Better.” Excitement!
Once upon a time, my neighbor asked the guy who does landscaping in out subdivision to clean up my spite berm. The berm is a 30 foot long, 3 foot high mound of dirt hand shoveled (out of pure spite – 3-4 dump trucks worth of dirt) by my husband to block that particular neighbor. It has trees and bushes planted on it. It was after my husband died, and he thought he was being nice (and that I wasn’t as angry at him and crazy as my husband – he was wrong about that one). I had unopened bags of mulch sitting on the berm, because there were fox kits in the neighborhood who were having a great time trying to redistribute all the dirt by digging holes and removing the landscape fabric. The landscape guy was about an hour into the job before I saw him and sent him on his way. He had cut two of the bushes wayyyy back into little geometric shapes and I was not happy about that. I liked their sprawling branches and they made a nice screen.
All that to say…I am a wild garden type. Though I do keep up with trimming the yews back into a reasonable shape, because it’s necessary or they look terrible. But the rest is wild.