Easy Gardener • Pat Howell
	Summer Musing

The eminent Edwardian gardener, Gertrude Jekyll, wrote in 1900 that it takes "half a lifetime" to decide what's best worth doing in a garden and another half to try to do it.

Most gardeners take a full lifetime to discover what's best worth doing and then run out of time. To sum up enormous wisdom for you in a sentence, the formula is simple. And that's the trouble–it's too simple: Grow the most beautiful flowers you have ever seen or heard of, going through the year. It is not important for a garden to be beautiful in the eyes of others. It is extremely important for the gardener to think it a fair substitute for Eden.

That is the formula for the best gardens. There are a few corollaries, such as ‘the Laws of Conflict,' but go by the above formula and temper it as follows:

• Pay reasonable attention to plants for the background (evergreens) that will enhance all the others.

• If some season does not greatly interest you (for example, winter), plant a few deciduous trees or shrubs with interesting bark or berries. Or "plant" several good-sized, handsome boulders; they will give character to your garden, they look better and better with age, and you don't have to water them, although watering can improve the chances for developing moss or even lichen. Then concentrate your efforts on the seasons you like best.

• Resign yourself to first establishing usable paths or walkways in the garden, because walks are generally too narrow. Four feet is about the minimum for wheelbarrows, humans, and other irksome necessities.

• Note well where you have shade and where you have sun, and plan accordingly.

Concentrate on really good, deep soil. The payoff is priceless.

• Make a spot for a table and chairs, or just chairs, to sit and enjoy it all.

The aim of the garden is not to make us complacent idiots, exactly, but to make us content and calm for a time, with sufficient energy (even after conflicts with the rampant ivy) to feel an awestruck thanks to God that such happiness can exist.

For a few days, of course...

This is certainly turning into The Year of the Weird in the garden world.

Our longest, heaviest winter in quite a while; the wettest spring in most memories; far too little sunshine. Then searing heat. Then...weeds.

Easy Gardener has been indulging herself in her favorite summer addiction: visiting other people's gardens in the company of some like-minded passionate gardeners, and soaking up the abundance, but noting the absences.

Plants are confused, or, worse, absent. New perennials potted up in January in greenhouses refused to put down roots until June! Spring gardens, particularly newly-planted ones, were a huge disappointment. In the old gardens, the azaleas, dogwoods, peonies, tree peonies, tulips, iris and daffodils all seemed to bloom at the same time. Breathtaking, but too much of a good thing, to be followed by...weeds.

The hummingbird magnet Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue," with the deep blue flowers, the bluest of the blue, listed as Zone 8, survived the winter. But Salvia "Indigo Spires," listed in Carroll Gardens' catalogs hardy in Westminster, Md., (Zone 6-10) did not reappear.

Pee Gee hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora) bloomed in early July. Brugmansias and Daturas (Angel's Trumpet) have a paucity of blooms, considering how they might normally produce. The morning glory is slowed by the searing heat and will start to bloom when we have cooler nights.

Formosa lilies are a foot shorter than their usual six feet. The lavenders "Grosso" and "Provence" are thriving, but the lavender "Hidcote" is failing (candidly, it's dead). All are in gravel, so we know they are not drowning. The lesson, evidently: don't plant "Hidcote" again, no matter what the weather.

The butterflies have postponed their arrival.

What's a gardener to do? Go visit more gardens.

The weirdest plant of all bloomed at the U.S. Botanic Garden July 24, 2003. The Amorphophallus titanum (the name is no accident) was extraordinarily large–56 inches tall. It blooms once every ten years. Fortunately, garden writer Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post covered this event, as did local news channels. Up close, it was even more amazing than its pictures.

Pat Howell is a Takoma Park gardener and landscape designer/garden-builder, and welcomes comments, advice, suggestions, complaints. She is available for hand-holding and answering questions through Deephaven Landscapers.