The Process vs. Product Garden (Blog 2)

I garden with one thought and one thought only in my mind. I want a beautiful display of flowers, and I want it to last all summer, and I want to do the least amount of work to make it happen. 

I don’t like to garden.  I don’t like to be dirty. I don’t like to be hot.  I don’t like the sun to touch my skin for too long because it will burn me. I don’t like sunscreen; it’s sticky and smells bad.  I don’t like bugs. I don’t like spiders.  I don’t like dirt under my fingernails, and my sun hat makes my hair all flat and ugly the rest of the day.  But I love flowers.  So I’ve figured out a couple of things I can do to cut down on the gardening process and still get a beautiful garden.

I plant perennials mostly, but not the kinds that only bloom one time per summer.  Then I’d actually have to plan and plant things that bloom in order, so that something was blooming all the time. (Way to much process for me.) I like the kinds of flowers that bloom all summer – like dahlias and begonias.   

When I plant perennials I don’t have to dig as many holes the next year. (You can add digging holes to the list of things I don’t like about gardening.) All I have to do to keep them nice this year is water, fertilize, and dead-head.  Easy-peasy – I can do that! 

I’m careful to buy the plants that will tolerate the full sun, western exposure in my front yard, or the very shady eastern exposure in the back.  That way I don’t have to re-plant half way through the year to get that product I am looking for – loads of flowers.  

When I plant an annual, I do it for sentimental purposes. I plant snapdragons every year because they were my youngest son’s favorite flowers.   I can’t plant them at the cemetery for him (they need too much water to survive up there), so they go in the front yard, where I can see them and be reminded of his laugh and his passion for living.  Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t, but I always add more.  

I planted daisies for my friend Susan last summer. Susan means “daisy”.  She was fighting breast cancer, and the daisies were my everyday visual reminder to pray for her and my aunt , who was also fighting breast cancer.  Interestingly enough, my daisy’s came back this year, just as Susan was getting a clean bill of health, and a full head of hair.)  In celebration, I added Black-Eyed Susans for her this year.  And yes, her eyes are black as night.

I don’t research what to putin my garden; if I have any questions, I call friends who like to garden and pick their brains.  For me, gardening is about the product, so information must be gained in a pleasant and expedient way. Otherwise, it would create too much process.

I don’t work too hard at preserving the garden over the winter, (too much process) but I do fertilize and mulch in the fall.   What comes back, comes back, what doesn’t – I’ll re-plant from whatever catches my eye at the hardware store in the spring.  I’m there often, following my other product oriented hobby, but that’s another story…

And to avoid the sun and the heat, I have been known to garden by halogen shop lights on extension cords in the middle of the night. I’m not joking… I do it fairly often.

­-posted by Miss Allison, who will tell you all about her mother and sisters’ process-oriented gardens tomorrow.