Gardening for a lifetime

When we broke ground for our current garden Mark and I were both 50 years old. We're now in year 13 of our ten-year plan. You do the math. There's the teahouse to be finished, fences as yet unbuilt (and undesigned), as well as areas still unplanted and unplanned. Suddenly we're finding garden maintenance eating up the time and energy we need to complete the framework of our garden. We've already begun to realize that we need to design and plant the unfinished areas in a way that we'll be able to care for as we age.

As a gardener, age brings wisdom, experience and big trees. It can also play havoc with your ability to haul mulch and move big boulders. We're not there yet, but we will be someday. Happily for all of us aging gardeners, Sydney Eddison has already grappled with this issue. She has a new book — ˝Gardening for a Lifetime" — filled with advice, stories, plant lists and suggestions about "how to garden wiser as you grow older." Eddison has the kind of real-life experience that comes from gardening in the same place for 48 years. And she's determined to stay, despite the death of her husband who was the heavy equipment man and did all those technical chores getting the garden ready for winter or spring.

Like Eddison's previous books, "Gardening for a Lifetime" is emminently readable and useful. Nothing is theoretical; it's all based on experience: Eddison's own or that of friends and fellow gardeners in similar situations. The book is reasonably priced ($19.95) and only a couple of hundred pages long so you can read it in an evening or two. In addition to all of Eddison's suggestions, there were two things I particularly liked about this book. I've always found Eddison to be a consumate teacher via her writing, and here she reprises her main points at the end of each chapter in a section called "Gleanings." It makes it easy to go back and quickly peruse the ideas that are most applicable to your situation.

The second thing I especially liked about the book is that there are no color pictures to distract you or make you feel inadequate. Instead the book is thoughtfully illustrated with black and white drawings to emphasize Eddison's descriptions. Since this is about editing and downsizing gardens, it seems a much more helpful approach.

GARDENING GONE WILD PHOTO

Sydney Eddison's container garden on her terrace. Notice how the garden furniture is painted to match the flower scheme; not surprising given that dealing with color in the garden was the topic of one of her prior books 

I've read (and own) most of Eddison's books. In the early 1990s she sent me a handwritten thank you note after I'd reviewed one of her books in my newspaper column. I treasure that little note because it was the first time someone recognized me as a garden writer. Through Eddison's books I was introduced to gardeners like Harold Epstein and Fred and Mary Ann McGourty — which is why you'll find their plants in my garden and their books on my shelves. Eddison also turned me into a daylily lover. Because of her and her daylily book, I became a member of the local Daylily Society, the first garden group I ever joined. And I bought daylilies from an array of regional growers, specializing in minis that surrounded my tiny brick patio. A few of those original daylilies still grow in this garden 20 years later. 

Eddison was my garden mentor in absentia. She helped me get started with her book, "A Patchwork Garden," and now she's leading the way for those of us who don't want to give up gardening — or our gardens. 

 

MICHELLE GERVAIS

One reason Sydney Eddison's garden is labor intensive: not only does she change the planting scheme and colors for her container garden each year, she also repaints the furniture. Sure, it's labor intensive but who can blame her when you look at this picture?

"GARDENING FOR A LIFETIME: HOW TO GARDEN WISER AS YOU GROW OLDER"

Here are a few tidbits from the book that caught my attention:

1. Don't make it smaller; make it simpler.
2. Maintenance is the crux of the issue.
3. Determine if you actually need help in the garden or if it's needed in other areas of your life (house cleaner?) to free you up to garden.  
4. A sunny perennial border is the most labor intensive kind of gardening. Shade requires less work, so don't complain about the trees.
5. Make lists and prioritze: a master list of everything that must be done in the garden and when. Then make daily punch lists of what you want to accomplish that day. Even if you only have 30 minutes in the garden, if you check the punch lists before you start, you'll have your gardening hit and get somethig important accomplished. 
6. Look for a garden helper at county extension classes and among university hort students. Eddison also offers advice on how to figure out how much help you may need.
7. Lawn grass is also labor intensive so consider switching from grass to a meadow. (If you live in Madison, check out Olbrich's meadow for ideas and plant lists)

 

Sydney Eddison with Phoebe

Comments

[Les]

One of the things that amazed me(other than the garden) during my recent visit to Pamela Harper's , was the fact that she still does most of the work herself. She does have a paid helper come in once a week to do the things she can't, but still it is a lot to keep up with. I guess dedication counts for something.

[Altoon]

Aging with the garden is something I think about quite a lot. It's led me to go back and forth about which aspect of my gardening is most important to me if I had to choose: the flowers or the vegetables. Right now I'm coming down on the side of vegetables. Since my garden is rather disheveled now compared to 10 years ago, I'm already adjusting to lower levels of energy and strength.

[Pam/Digging]

This is information that would be extremely useful for designers, I think, because most of my clients are not gardeners and don't want to be. But they still want beautiful landscaping. Low-maintenance is the key.

And I only wish my mature live oak trees were low-maintenance. Alas, many live oaks sucker from the roots ALL the time, and I'm always out trying to pull those up.

[Lisa at Greenbow]

I am beginning to look at my garden with older eyes. I can still do it all but I now think about what I do as to how much work it will be later. This is a book I will have to have.