“And where does satisfaction come from?
I think it comes from contact with the materials
And lives of this world, from the mutual dependence
Of creatures upon one another, from fellow feeling.”
Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land
There is something about a garden that make it easy to learn from other people. There is no one right way to do anything as far as I can tell. If you want to peek at someone’s psychology, ask them about their garden. Then just stand back and watch.
One wonderful thing about gardening is that it is not a competitive sport. It is like life; sooner or later everybody pays their dues and loves to tell the story.
My old friend, Mary Margaret, a management consultant for technology companies, taught me to grow potatoes. I was not yet a believer in dirt-born miracles, but Mary Margaret changed all that. “Plant them in straw,” she said, “just put ‘em in hay.” Mary Margaret drawled on like honey about her farm in Texas. Coaxing me with the roundest, warmest brown eyes, “now then just try,” she said.
So I plopped those chunky little tubers on straw, and hoped for the best. All summer long, the ragged porcupine plots greened up and overran their wire cages, spilling over onto the early Butternut. But still I doubted. The leaves kept coming, bullying their way out of that unruly mop and languished there for weeks, but I was afraid to peek underneath thinking it might be all leaves and no potatoes.
Finally, feeling the swelter of September, the Ukrainian peasant in my genes—potatoes and beets are my destiny—I decided the day had come. Somewhere one red leaf fell. I sniffed the air like a sheepdog on the moor and thought—pot roast!—potatoes ready or not. I marched up to those mounds, eyed the mess, earnestly got on my knees and parted the bales.
Oh, how to describe it! There they were—big ones and little ones, red and gold creamies, lined up clean like they were going to a parade. My spuds, my tubers, my taters. Smelling like mown hay.
That year, I sent Mary Margaret a picture of a colander filled with red potatoes, parsnips, Italian parsley and tomatoes. I knew she would be proud.
Two of my neighbors—who I affectionately call Gandhi and Schwartzkopf–taught me their approaches to coping with moles. In my neck of the woods, if you are going to make peace with your garden, you must achieve a certain peace with moles.
As a new gardener, I would come into my garden in the morning only to find that moles had been there the night before. Wreaking havoc and smothering the young seedlings like an earthquake, they also disrupted my sense of the aesthetic with mounds where mounds weren’t meant to be. Dismayed, I counseled with my neighbors.
“Jim,” I hollered after a particularly bad assault on the King Richard Leeks, “What do you do about moles?”
Jim appeared bright-eyed and congenial. “I just plant extra for them, gophers too, and slugs. So there’s plenty for everybody.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s really, umm, that’s really, nice of you, I guess.” My words were hollow and anemic. “Jeez,” I thought.
Feeling bewildered and hostile by comparison, I consulted with Deborah on the other side of my agreeable acre.
“Deb, hey! Got a question for you. How do you handle the moles in your garden?” Deborah leaned on the rough-hewn fence, a basket of fresh eggs in her hand, her ruddy skin even redder from the sun, “I’ve got my .22—I just put it down the hole when they are active and that’s that.”
“Oh,” I said and raised my eyebrows, nodding conspiratorially. Then I edged away from the fence and scuttled back to the demilitarized zone, somewhere in the fragile daily balance between Gandhi and Schwartzkopf.
Although gardeners tend to work alone a lot of the time, it is revealing to work alongside people. You can see how they do things and what they care about.
I appreciate that Jim has turned his whole front yard into a glorious chaotic jumble of color and texture because I couldn’t do it. I appreciate that Mary brings me armfuls of Calla Lilies every spring because I would not grow them. And that Deborah has ducks I can borrow from time to time for slug patrol. I appreciate that Ron marks the borders of his huge garden with living fences of apple trees in an espalier eight feet tall.
When I ask Ron, a retired physician, how things are going in his garden, he answers in considered, thoughtful sentences as though he were discussing the prognosis of a patient. We talk about the weather, about the way the corn is developing, about the differences between this year’s tomatoes and last. We discuss our problems in the garden and share observations: what bugs are new on the scene, what plants are decked out in all their magnificence, and which are fighting the fight of their chlorophylled life.
Ron loaned me his tractor to move seven cubic yards of dirt into my garden because I wanted raised beds. On the morning the dirt was delivered, I stood in front of the two big piles of garden mix and mulch and almost cried. There was no way I could do it alone, even with the tractor. 
I called Kathleen from up the street and it happened that she was in the mood to take a break from her computer screen. She arrived in shorts and t-shirt, her mane of reddish brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail. Laughing at my overalls, shamrock green clogs and back brace, she attacked those piles of dirt with zeal. For several hours we were a team. I couldn’t have built those beds without her.
My garden is a hybrid creation now. It has Kathleen’s Irish laughter, the gift of her delicate hands and wrists. It has Ron’s generosity. It has compost from Mary’s Callas. It has the diverse influences of Gandhi and Schwartzkopf. It has the kindness of friends (Kathleen and Bill) who helped Patrick build the new greenhouse.
When I look out at my garden at the end of a season, I remember the friendships grown and harvested there in the simple fullness of working together. It makes the food taste better, I’m sure of it. Even though we are in a city, my old-fashioned neighborhood seems a throwback to another time.
How have people helped you build your garden?
Thank you for this wonderful post on garden psychology. I chortled over making peace with moles (not going to happen here), and thought about who helped me in my garden. My neighbor’s fig trees drop figs every year and little trees grow here and there. The elderly man across the street dug up 25 ferns and brought them over before he went to a retirement home. He needed to know his beloved ferns would be cared for. A friend gave me a sage plant blessed by her unique energy, and it grows better than anything except the enormous yellow lilies, which are easily 8 feet high and gorgeous. And so it goes, these and many more stories in my little patch of dirt. Thanks!
I’d love to see your 8′ tall yellow lilies, I’ve had poor success growing lilies and can’t figure out why. They are such happy flowers. Thanks for the stories–don’t you feel we are just renting out this garden space until someone else comes after us and “moves the furniture?” It’s a gift to have a little patch of dirt for sure. Thanks for visiting Marilyn!
Susie the people who have influenced my garden are my ancestors as they put this gardening thing into my blood…then friends and a few bloggers really honed this gardening thing….I have very few around me who garden which is sad.
I think a lot of neighborhoods are changing over time. Mine is too as new people move in. I guess that’s why that Wendall Berry quote struck me. But the first thing that occurred to me reading your comment is that you have created a garden in your blog (a tribute to the real one made of flowers and vegetables and weeds and critters.) And you harvest many many friendships…it looks like from around the world. When I found your blog–searching on the web and wanting to do one of my own–I was very moved by that. It influenced me for sure.
Hi Susie, thanks for visiting my blog and commenting, I’m not sure I would have found yours otherwise. I loved this post, it is the essence of gardening to me. Having only just moved here I don’t yet have the rich stories to tell that you do, but already there are promising relationships based around plant sharing, and the work that visiting family have willingly waded in to that has made such a difference. Add in the support, ideas and encouragement from the blogging community, and you have the beginnings of that magical alchemy between personal vision and effort aided and abetted by the kindness and generousity – and skill – of others.
Alchemy is the perfect word for it–thank you. Given that wonderful cozy conservatory, you’ll have plenty of visitors in no time. The blogging community has been very supportive, you are right. In June or so, I plan to host a writing challenge called Wordseeds: Writers in the Garden. I’m looking for ideas for the right giveaway in addition to being a contributor on my site. Hope you’ll come by for that! I think our weather patterns are similar between the UK and the Pacific Northwest. We have a long growing season too and plenty of sun, mixed with our clouds.