The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (20 page)

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NEW HOME PRESENTS A BLANK
canvas on which a builder’s landscapes usually lays the yard-and-garden design. Buyers of used homes often are on their own, and can have a world of challenge before them. In spite of what seem to be impediments, a garden can sprout up anywhere they want it in their newly acquired yard—even in the middle of a monolithic sea of green grass. Home owners must ignore the surface, and look with a true gardener’s
eye at the endless opportunities that he before them.

A trash heap can become a treasure
. True, these used homes can come with eyesores—genteel trash heaps in the corner of the backyard, abandoned dog runs, weed-filled alleys, and little ugly spaces at the house corners which no one ever spent a moment thinking about. Sometimes the mortgage also paid for outbuildings such as extra garages or metal storage sheds.

Far from griping, the new home owner should rejoice: the more trash, the better, for one man’s trash pile can be another man’s Garden of Eden. Literally, the trash pile is an opportunity to start a hilled garden. First, cover the pile generously with good planting soil. (In the case of one householder with a huge hill filled with farm “trash,” this meant bringing in five truckloads of soil to cover the debris of years.) On a little hill, start with an accent plant, perhaps an arborvitae or a juniper, placing it off center. Embellish it with a few other evergreen shrubs, then use the angle of the incline to display flowers, an assortment of ornamental grasses, or perhaps a cascade of vines. Mulch it attractively and well, because it will become a standout feature of your yard.

Beautify the desultory dog run
. A ten-foot-wide dog run can be transformed into an exciting avenue with curved walk, flanked by delightful shrubs, trees, and flowers. Some intrepid home owners would even manage to fill the area with rocks, and let a stream meander through its length, with a small recirculating pool or waterfall at one end.

The entrance to the basement door, or the side of the house that holds the gas meter, is often ugly and ignored. Tiny corner spaces that others neglected over the years can be made into small garden oases. Even a space four feet square can be used cleverly, to hold vines, plants, and flowers. In the background, place several flue tiles of different heights and place a plant in each one. Train vines up the back wall, and in the foreground place a slow-growing shrub and some groundcover. Or, alternatively, place a couple of interesting rocks in the area, tuck in an evergreen shrub and a hardy perennial such as yarrow. The tinier the area, the smaller-scale the plants should be.

Don’t tear down that decrepit outbuilding
. Neglected or even abandoned outbuildings are like a gift from heaven. The British know how wonderful they are: They paint them
delightful shades of robin’s egg blue or dove gray. They nail on charming windowboxes trailing with lantana, hang the walls abundantly with vines, and grace the front with old roses, delphiniums, and verbascum. Any building, ruined or not, is wonderful background for a garden.

It is a major challenge to transform an ugly outbuilding that claims a major part of the view of the house, for instance, a metal workshop of the sort that hobbyists buy. Since all these workshops seem to be cumbersome and ill-styled, and painted in a mustard yellow color, the first step is to paint them a neutral tan-brown, to help them disappear into nature’s kind arms. No amount of vines or roses will take the onus off such a hideous structure, so the thing to do is distract—by erecting as much stockade fencing as one can afford, and planting generous clumps of disguising evergreen trees. Your next objective should be to clothe the (newly painted) walls, and especially the front wall, with sturdy plants such as trumpet vines. Eventually, its basic ugliness will be disguised. This same “plant and conquer” philosophy should apply to homely garages. Paint them, and plant them. No homely garage should be left to glare out at you,
when you can make it the site of another charming garden.

Boring expanses of worn-out lawn:
Probably more common than inheriting a junk pile is inheriting a yard with nothing in it except lawn, and often tired, shabby lawn at that, The new owner looks on this expanse with a sinking heart, for how can it ever be transformed into something interesting?

That is when our gardening imagination should come into play, seeking out the creative solution to the use of this open ground. Envision where trees or rocks will go: Then start out slowly, piece by piece, building the garden as you have time and money. The more tentative gardener might take the approach of starting with a garden that hugs the house, like a timid child clinging to his mama’s skirts. This is not necessary, and not nearly as much fun as starting at the most dramatic focal point of the yard.

Prepare the earth in this area, digging up and removing turf, and enriching the soil, and then set in place one significant garden accent—a large boulder, a sculpture, an evergreen bush or tree, or a small deciduous tree. Don’t skimp with this feature—that is, make it big enough. It will capture attention,
for around it you will plant your first garden. Always keep a rough plan of the big picture—that is, the whole yard—in mind. If you’re the compulsive type, you can lay it all down in a formal diagram, or you can wing it: One gardener claimed, “I never plot anything—I do it all by eye.”

Making a successful garden, piece by piece
. One home owner, who did this over seven years, transformed a drab, long yard into garden after garden, until there was nothing of grass but a serpentine grass path, taking one through a series of interesting and intricate connecting garden beds. Periodically, the eye was drawn to such garden features as stone benches, sculptures, vertical pines, ruined walls, a gazebo, and rose-filled arches. No one who had seen the garden seven years before would have believed it was the same place.

But such are gardeners—patient, and enterprising. Using their gardener’s eye. Helping a garden spring up almost anywhere—even on a dunghill. In fact, a dunghill would be a gift almost too good to be true.