Jean Ryan

Spring in the nursery is a happy time. Flushed with hope and fresh resolve, shoppers load their carts with more than they can use, for who can resist the tangerine zinnias, the deep blue delphiniums, the baby stalks of corn. This is “The Year,” customers vow; this is the year they will have, at last, their dream garden. 

Because people are impatient, because we must keep pace with the box store down the street—that heartless, hulking nemesis—we bring in stock as soon as it becomes available. Despite our cautions, many folks will buy cartloads of these green-housed plants and plunge them into cold soil on a promisingly sunny day, and that night, or maybe the next, a hard frost will steal into their gardens, blackening the basil and wilting the watermelon. The disgruntled patrons will then return for replacements, digging into their pockets a second time, albeit not quite so cheerfully.  

Eventually the soil warms and winter unhooks its talons, and we assure everyone that they can garden with abandon.  Plants stream into the nursery like fresh troops and are cleared out the same day. The abundance! The joy! 

Busy shoving more wondrous things into the earth, gardeners fail to notice the tiny green aphids in the broccoli, the tunnels forming in the Swiss chard leaves, the shroud of white fungus creeping over the zucchini. Not until their gardens are riddled with trouble do people perceive a problem. How they react is who they are. Some, blaming nature, will turn on it. They will buy the most lethal products they can get their hands on, and they will turn their gardens into battle zones. Others, blaming us, will storm back into the nursery, brandishing their sickly specimens and demanding a refund. 

And then there are those who blame themselves. They will come into the nursery shamefaced, holding plastic bags of evidence and asking us what went wrong, why are they such bad gardeners. While gardening is supposed to be a restorative pastime, too often this is not the case. People are intimidated by plants. Their gardens get the better of them and they give up, never understanding that most of the problems they encounter stem from a basic lack of knowledge: wrong location, poor soil, insufficient pruning, too much pesticide, too little food or water. Each plant in a successful garden must be studied with keen interest throughout the season.

It is true that nature is a tough adversary, especially if you treat her as one. The more you resist her efforts, the harder she’ll work to thwart yours. Tomatoes, caterpillars; roses, mildew—it’s all the same to her. Balance is what she’s after.

Rewarding gardens start with humility. You are, after all, asking this earth for miracles: giant sunflowers, golden watermelons, crimson peonies. With all this bounty, a certain amount of loss is inevitable. Plant anyway. The bees await the blooms, while ladybugs await the aphids. Gardens are good for the soul and good for the planet.