How My Garden Helped Me Learn About Love and the Loss of It: The Love of Flower Gardening

You must really love flower gardening!”

There are natural-born flower gardeners and then there are the rest of us, who aspire to be flower gardeners, but are not quite certain where or how to start. I was one of those people.

Attempting to build flower gardens, helped me to learn the love of gardening and gradually increased my awareness of the complexity of landscaping. Being an amateur gardener at best, I exceptionally blessed to be taught the basics of flower gardening by one of my neighbors, who was actively involved with the local, horticultural society.  

Initially, when faced with a huge lot that had not been landscaped, everything appeared to be a foreboding, monumental task and I knew that I would have to undertake it alone.

“Am I really up to this?” I wondered, looking at the pile of rocks, gravel and earth in the front yard of our new home. The soil in that area seemed to be mostly chunks of clay, as hard as rocks. There was some sand and topsoil in closer to the house.   

The gray haired, elderly woman, who lived across the street, reminded me of one of my grandmothers and soon became my mentor. She had visited me a few times and immediately sensed my fear and trepidation with respect to attempting to create any flower gardens. Her whole yard was already blossoming like a rose, and it was still spring.  

I became her protege throughout that spring and summer, as she kept showing up on my doorstep with beautiful bouquets of flowers, plants, cuttings and seeds that I could plant in my flower gardens. I was not familiar with most of them, but accepted them graciously rather than offend her. She was more than happy to tell me where and how to plant them, as she was alone and did not have children or grandchildren.

Trying to be polite, as well as a good neighbor, I would invite her in for a cup of tea. I enjoyed our lengthy conversations about flower gardening. Invariably, I wound up going across the street with her to see her beautiful flowers. She also had a prolific vegetable garden.      

I seldom left there without a new flower to plant. Sometimes, she offered me fresh garden produce, too. She realized that I understood the basics of vegetable gardening, but did not know much about growing flowers. I was determined to succeed and in time, landscape our entire lot. 

“If she can do it, so can I.”

There was an extremely rough-looking area at the top of my driveway beside the five-foot brick pillar, my front door-step and the arched doorway to our home. This area really needed work!

“It is the first thing that people see when they come, so I have to do something about it, now.”

My creative genius kicked in.

“To grow anything, I need a shovel,” I said to myself, as I drove to the hardware store. I walked out a while later with a garden shovel, a bag of peat moss, a small, green wheelbarrow and some 20-20-20, for flowers and vegetable garden.

Then, I spotted a Rose of Sharon bush with a new bud on it. I could not resist buying it, too.

I started to become excited, as I pictured it in my first, flower garden, with a walkway that led to the front of the house. To complete that flower garden layout, I needed several low-lying junipers and a half-dozen patio stones, and so I simply purchased them, right then.

I had a basic idea of what I wanted to accomplish and knew how I wanted the flower garden to look when I was finished. My work was work cut out.

“A pail and a garden hose!” I thought to myself. “I should buy garden gloves and small, garden tools, too!”

Those also went into the trunk of my car. Now I had everything I needed to start my flower garden, except for a straw hat. It was already mid-day and the sun was beating straight down.

Being an amateur gardener, I decided to plant the Rose of Sharon, first. I realized later, that it would have been much wiser to dig up the flower garden area, pick out all of the rocks, stones and debris, work the soil properly with some peat moss and fertilizer, and then do the planting.

It was hard digging, but I figured out a way to do it. All I had to do was soak the soil with my garden hose. It softened the hard clay, but made it muddy to work in.

I must have done something right, as once I had planted my Rose of Sharon, peat pot and all, several feet in front of the pillar, I instinctively knew that it was in exactly the right place. The water seemed to refresh it, too.  

I stood back, picked out several other spots and planted the low-lying junipers, again not working the soil at all, just digging a hole for them using water to soften the soil first. The water was cool and refreshing on my bare feet, as I put peat moss in the bottom of each hole and planted the junipers, peat pots and all, in the holes.

I was hot, but continued to work and plunked my patio stones down in a crooked line, in between the Rose of Sharon and the junipers. I really should have dug up the ground, grass and weeds underneath them, but decided I could always do that later.

By then, it was mid-afternoon and starting to get cool at the front of the house, as the sun was heading towards the west.

I decided not to dig up the rest of the area either, but rather to build it up, with more soil. It was probably a good decision.

The healthiest looking top soil in the yard was under the overhanging area, right at the front of the house, so I decided to move some of it over to the flower garden area with the wheelbarrow, and then put several larger, low-lying junipers under there to fill in the holes, later.

I found several large rocks in the yard and placed them on top of the new soil, as well.

Shortly thereafter, my neighbor showed up with a basket of rockery plants. I knew absolutely nothing about them, but with her guidance, I planted those, too.

“Perfect,” she said. “I could not have done better myself.”

“What a miracle!” I thought to myself the next morning, as I went outside to survey my first attempt at a flower garden. “Everything looks so perfect!”    

Because of the heat, fertilizer and the water, overnight a white blossom with a pink center, had opened up on the Rose of Sharon bush.

As I watched, an ant came out of the heart of the blossom, perched on one petal and sipped a drop of early morning dew.

I was thrilled!

I was also hooked on flower gardening and have been ever since.