gardening – Tracy Durnell

Drought reveals lawn patterns hundreds of years old

Liked History revealed (chatsworth.org)

Recent record high temperatures revealed the remnants of an ornate 17th century garden design on the South Lawn, normally hidden from view…It was covered over and replaced with a new design around 1730 but because the grass on the new lawn has shorter roots it burns more quickly, creating a contrast and temporarily revealing the older garden underneath.

It seems outrageous that a lawn resodded 300 years ago retains these imprints of its past. The land holds so many memories, and plants live on a much longer scale than we do. Every time a new secret is unveiled or we learn how to interpret what we’re seeing (like in the PNW the history of logging remains visible in stumps with springboard notches still clear to see), it’s a reminder of the long now, and our tiny place within the vastness of time and history.

Gardeners Give a Fuck

Quoted Audacious Gardening: On Daring to Care – The Planthunter (The Planthunter)

A personal essay on life and gardening by Georgina Reid.

Gardening is simply a framework for engagement with our world, grounded in care and action. To garden is to care deeply, inclusively, and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads… To be a gardener is to give a fuck. To be a gardener is to be invested in a place—to know it, to protect it, and to be present.
— Georgina Reid

This is a good metaphor.

Gardeners plant and tend things that they won’t get to appreciate, trees that won’t mature till we’re dead. We invest in the future, planting bulbs and trusting they will bloom after the dark winter. We are patient, letting young plants take their time to fill in after three to five years. It looks a little sparse there at the beginning, but we know it will grow into something spectacular.

We (hopefully) plant with a vision — and if we’re wise we’ll listen to the plants and adapt our vision to reality, accepting the plants that can thrive instead of coddling the ones we want but that hate our conditions.

We do the boring groundwork of enriching the soil, making it a place where our plants can survive.

We wage the endless battle against invasive weeds that steal our nutrients.

We (hopefully) learn from our failures even as we keep up hope the next experiment will succeed, and aren’t afraid to try new things. We continuously learn and grow along with our garden.

We embrace the seasons, celebrating the best of what each offers – bulbs and annuals in spring, perennials and grasses in summer, textural elements and evergreen foliage in winter.