A.A. Milne’s quote – “Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them” – describes my feelings perfectly.
The property my home is on is almost an acre and every inch of it is part of a habitat for birds, dragonflies, butterflies, numerous crawly things and even a turtle. My front yard is the only one on my street that isn’t an expanse of grass which has to be mowed – rendering it useless for insects and putting diesel fumes into the air.
The first garden that I remember is the Victory Garden my father planted when we lived in Baton Rouge in the early days of WWII. It had carrots, tomatoes, summer squash, eggplant, cucumbers and snap beans. I remember how good these fresh-from-the-garden vegetables tasted.
When we moved to Lafayette in 1943, there was no need to plant a Victory Garden because men with wagons full of vegetables drove through the streets every morning selling their wares. My father made a rose garden for my mother and also planted zinnias, daisies and cornflowers.
I have tried without success to grow cornflowers in my garden but they refuse to come up. Perhaps my Garden Angel will have more success. ‘Garden Angel’ is what I call Katie: a wonderful young woman I met because we both had cloth bags as we entered a local grocery store. We talked about saving the environment and that led to finding out she was an environmental gardener – and now she comes weekly to weed and water.
I have seen many of the famous gardens in this country and abroad. My second daughter and I were in Philadelphia to see a Cezanne exhibit and drove to Winterthur to see the garden there. I have also visited the Botanical Garden in New York, a lovely place that has a train show in December with many trains on many tracks running through the plants setup with this annual special exhibition.
When I went to Nova Scotia with two of my daughters (the eldest and fourth), we saw the magnificent gardens at Annapolis Royal as well as the many cottage gardens in front of homes as we drove through the countryside.
I am particularly fond of cottage gardens. One of the highlights of trips to Ireland and Scotland were the gardens filled with local favorites including asters, pinks, phlox, delphiniums, and, of course, roses in abundance (as we visited in June).
On my first trip to London, I toured Westminster Cathedral with a crowd of other tourists. It is indeed a beautiful place filled with history. But I had a private mission. I had read that there was a walled garden on the Cathedral grounds that dated from 1100, and I wanted to see it.
I left the group and walked down the hall that would lead me to it. A man dressed in a tartan kilt, a white shirt and a black coat approached me. He asked me what I was doing there, and I said I wanted to see the walled garden. He said nothing was in bloom, as winter had set in. I said I didn’t care, I just wanted to see the place. And so I did. I still remember looking at that square of bare dirt and thinking it dated to the days of William the Conqueror
I visited Kew Gardens on another trip to London, this one with my second husband. Dick and our driver went to a pub while I wandered the gardens seeing not only flowers but also benches with plaques on them naming the person in whose honor they had been placed.
When my fourth daughter and I were in Paris, we visited the Tuileries Garden. But the one we loved best was Claude Monet’s garden which supplied not only beauty to view but was also the subject of many of his paintings. Here a riot of flowers bloomed—anemones, asters, bellflowers, dahlias, rudbeckia, clematis, nasturtiums and, of course, roses.
My gardens are nowhere up to these gardens, however, they still give me the gifts all gardens do — peace, content, and joy.