-
Now available for $24.95 including shipping. -
Now available for $21.00 including postage. Vendors I Like
Click Here to buy from Cobrahead
Gardening as We Get Older
Garden writer Sydney Eddison has been one of my favorite garden writers for a long time. Years ago I wrote that reading her book, The Self Taught Gardener (Viking Penguin, 1997) was like getting advice from a kind auntie who encouraged you to garden and to create something uniquely your own. Since reading that book of hers, I have read four of her others – all wonderful – including her most recent, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (Timber Press, 2010).
This most recent book is a quiet reflection about how Sydney and her friends have dealt with growing older and having less energy, money and time while also having more aches and pains. I’m closing in on 65, and this book speaks to me. I realize that in the years ahead I’ll have to modify my gardens to make them less labor intensive. And, like Sydney, I’ll have to learn to accept imperfections.
Books by Garden writer Sydney Eddison
Sydney Eddison has written a very personal book, largely about how she has modified her own gardens, and how she has come to realize that getting help in the garden – either volunteer or paid – is necessary as we get older. Her beloved husband, Martin, passed away after 45 years of marriage in 2006. He is no longer available to mow, rake leaves or to cheer her on. She has come to accept the fact that her gardens will no longer be immaculate. Here are some of her tricks and tips:
Simplify the garden palette. Sydney≠s book is about her flower gardens, which I visited in 2001, and which were, at that time, just about picture perfect. She has eliminated many perennials, substituting handsome, low-maintenance shrubs. She has given away plants that require staking and cutting back. She keeps plants with nice foliage, and also eliminates things that multiply too fast, taking over the garden – the thugs, if you will.
One of her older friends decided to grow just 3 colors of flowers – blue, yellow and white. That helped unify the color scheme and eased making decisions about what must go. Giving away favorite plants is never easy, but Sydney says it gets easier with practice.
Make lists, she suggests, and prioritize what needs to be done. If you now need help pruning a massive hedge, decide if you wish to pay someone to do it every year – or pull it out.
Sydney≠s land includes some nice forest, and she praises forest as a place for simple, low-maintenance gardens. Plant clumps of daffodils along a woodland path, and some shade loving plants and you have a garden. Most aggressive weeds do best in full sun, so weeding is less a problem in shade.
Mulch is important: “It virtually eliminates weeding in the flower beds and helps retain moisture in what is otherwise a very dry situation, and eventually the mulch decomposes and improves the quality and texture of the soil.” I agree. She mulches flower beds with leaf mulch, and her soil is as good as any I have seen.
I disagree with her position that edging flower a bed – digging a little moat – is not worth the time. I think edging dresses up a flower bed and keeps the lawn from crawling in. But I am 15 years her junior, so I may see it differently in years ahead.
Sydney’s book The Gardener≠s Palette: Creating Color in the Garden (Contemporary Books, 2003) taught me much of what I know about color theory for the garden. In it, she spent considerable time writing about container gardening, and how interesting plants in pots can add much to a garden or terrace. In her new book, Sydney points out that containers can be a boon to aging gardeners, too. They are easy to install, virtually weed-free, and can be dramatic – but do require more watering than plants in the ground.
Sydney Eddison
As gardeners age, so do their gardens. Sydney writes about losing mature trees that succumbed to age, insects or storms. But, ever cheerful, she points out that sometimes losing a tree is a blessing – it opens up a view, or allows more light into what had become a shady garden.
There are many nuggets of information in Gardening for a Lifetime. For example, I learned that you can cut an overgrown rhododendron, azalea or mountain laurel right to the ground in the spring, and it will send up vigorous new growth – allowing one to start all over. And I will want to try some plants she mentions, including a shrub called Sapphireberry (Symplocos paniculata ) which is hardy in zones 4 to 8.
Most of all, I am encouraged by Sydney Eddison≠s determination, as she approaches 80, to stay in her house and to manage her gardens – because I hope to do the same. She points out that, “Gardens don’t have endings like novels. And as gardeners, we don≠t want them to be finished. In any case, real life works in ways we cannot anticipate and will never understand.” She accepts what life has brought her, and shares her knowledge of making do with what she has in pleasing prose. Whether you are young or old, winter is a good time to read this.