I think what I love most about a garden are its surprises. Of course I love planting flowers and seeing them emerge, I love my roses every one of them, I love seeing the perennials return year after year. But the most delightful part of a garden for me is to see nature going its own way, doing its own thing, showing me year after year that I’m just its handmaiden, that I’m only the caretaker, not the owner of my garden. Nature is the ultimate decider of how things are to be.
Here are some of the surprises I’ve had in my garden since I became its caretaker, now ten years ago.
The first year in Jonchères I planted sage up at the upper border of my back garden. It has flourished and just now is fragrant with purple blooms, and what I love about it is that it just grows there by itself, I never have to water it, and it comes back fuller and more beautiful every year.
But to my astonishment I found in poking around in my front garden this spring, lo and behold, sage! Now it’s up, a blooming purple patch there too, where there had been a kind of bare patch that had been a little needy. Nature, blowing sage up and over my cottage, from back to front, filling in a garden hole!
A couple years ago, in redoing the communal pathway going through our property, a truck severed the large yucca plant that had been growing in my rock garden. The yucca looked completely dead and I was quite upset and was all ready to ask the village to get me a new one (since it was a decision of the village council to redo that path). But then one day, I happened to glance a little more closely at the long rib that had been left. And what did I see—not just one but SEVEN new Yucca plants pushing out from it. It turned out to be extremely good for that yucca to have been cut “to the bone” so to speak, and I have even had to dig out a couple of the new plants and plant them elsewhere!
That same first year, one of my neighbors, Jeannette, gave me a little seedling of some plant which I planted in my back garden. It grew and bloomed with delicate blue flowers that would close up at night, open up in the daytime. I was quite fond of it But then, after a couple years, I didn’t see it anymore. Then one spring, about four years ago, we came down to the cottage to find the whole rock garden hillside full of that blue flower, called “lin” in French, flax in English. I was thrilled, and said to myself, now I’ll have tons of this flower every spring.
Nature must have heard me being too self-satisfied over “my” blue lin because the next year, there wasn’t a one in my garden—but down the path in my neighbor’s garden, there was tons of it! It had all migrated down to her!
This spring, I’m happy to say I had several bunches of “lin” again, some of them growing IN the pathway, others in among my lavender plants, and I took great pleasure in those lovely pale blue flowers, but never again will I presume upon Nature necessarily providing them to me every year—it will be as Nature chooses!!
My garden came with a huge garden of lavender, all I have had to do in it is pull out some of the old woody ones and plant new ones. But what I love is moseying around in my garden and finding other little clumps of lavender there where I never planted any: along the north side of the house for example, or in among the irises, or down in the lower garden!
This year, there were, scattered all over the garden and also on the hillside above my garden, patches of pink flowers, definitely wild, but which I had never seen before and certainly not in such profusion. Will they be back again next year? Maybe, maybe not.
. Every year I get lots of surprise wild orchids in my garden. I’m told that wild orchids grow where the air is very pure which pleases me. They pop up anywhere, under my back stairway, in the shadowy slope below the house that descends to the little main road of our village, up at the very top of the back stone steps leading up to the top of the garden. I’ve come to recognize their large glossy leaves and when we do our annual late spring grass and weed mowing, I go around the garden first with my pruning shears cutting carefully around the orchids so F will see them and they won’t get mown down. This year there is a whole group of them on the east side of the garden, just under the forsythia—some with delicate white blooms all up and down the stalk, others with just a purple tipped flower at the very top….a whole exotic garden growing of its own will—and Nature’s, naturellement!
Along the back path, I noticed this year two very tall green plants growing just a couple feet away from each other. I knew I’d never planted them and I wondered what they would produce. The other day I went outside, and they both had bloomed: a large taper on each one with up and down rows of yellow flowers—looking like immense yellow candles. I have no idea what they are….and realized I need a book on wild flowers in France to help me identify some of the garden surprises!
Other wild flowers that have come on their own to my garden are Queen Anne’s lace, wildflower which I love not only because of its beautiful lacey white blooms but because it always makes me think of my grandmother Dill who first pointed it out to me, and wild red poppies like the ones you see in the famous Monet painting—I’m absolutely delighted I’m finally getting red poppies in my garden, I’ve been wanting them for ages and even tried throwing seeds around once without results—but here they are now, who knows how or why?! Another regular to my garden also is Blue Chardon, with its prickly leaves and prickly blue flowers and from which one can make a bouquet to last all winter. A huge one seems to be coming up just next to our bamboo this year.
But the very biggest surprise in my garden came last year, and it’s an even BIGGER surprise this year! Last year, right next to my Queen Elizabeth rose, I suddenly saw lots of green runners, and in looking at them closely, recognized them from Grandma and Mother’s gardens—sweet peas! Where did they come from? I never planted them. But they grew thick and heavy and I finally had to put a couple trellises against the stone wall to train them up and away from my roses, and they bloomed all summer, fragrant deep rose colored flowers. This year, I’ve got about quadruple the number of sweet peas and they have spread all over the yard, back and front. I found some at the foot of a cypress tree and trained them up so that they are blooming all around it. Others are in the iris gardens. Others up in the rock garden. And in my front garden where they first began I had to put up a third trellis! I know I will have to probably cut some of them out at the end of the summer if next summer I don’t want a garden full of sweet peas and nothing else—but what a wonderful flower it is nonetheless, and not the least because it just flew on its own into my garden, and clearly is thriving here!
At the beginning of my life as a gardener, I was distraught if I planted something and it didn’t do well or didn’t take, died or just disappeared. I used to make “flower maps” of everything I had planted, try to keep track of it all, but as some things vanished and new things appeared, my “maps” became quickly out of date. Now I’m much more philosophical as a gardener. I know for every plant I lose, Nature will spring one of its surprises on me, something new and wonderful will appear. I don’t let my garden get to the jungle state—but at the same time I leave it a certain amount of freedom to just “do its own thing”. And so, hand in hand, Nature and I take care of this little plot of land loaned to me for a few blissful years.
Here are some of the surprises I’ve had in my garden since I became its caretaker, now ten years ago.
The first year in Jonchères I planted sage up at the upper border of my back garden. It has flourished and just now is fragrant with purple blooms, and what I love about it is that it just grows there by itself, I never have to water it, and it comes back fuller and more beautiful every year.
But to my astonishment I found in poking around in my front garden this spring, lo and behold, sage! Now it’s up, a blooming purple patch there too, where there had been a kind of bare patch that had been a little needy. Nature, blowing sage up and over my cottage, from back to front, filling in a garden hole!
A couple years ago, in redoing the communal pathway going through our property, a truck severed the large yucca plant that had been growing in my rock garden. The yucca looked completely dead and I was quite upset and was all ready to ask the village to get me a new one (since it was a decision of the village council to redo that path). But then one day, I happened to glance a little more closely at the long rib that had been left. And what did I see—not just one but SEVEN new Yucca plants pushing out from it. It turned out to be extremely good for that yucca to have been cut “to the bone” so to speak, and I have even had to dig out a couple of the new plants and plant them elsewhere!
That same first year, one of my neighbors, Jeannette, gave me a little seedling of some plant which I planted in my back garden. It grew and bloomed with delicate blue flowers that would close up at night, open up in the daytime. I was quite fond of it But then, after a couple years, I didn’t see it anymore. Then one spring, about four years ago, we came down to the cottage to find the whole rock garden hillside full of that blue flower, called “lin” in French, flax in English. I was thrilled, and said to myself, now I’ll have tons of this flower every spring.
Nature must have heard me being too self-satisfied over “my” blue lin because the next year, there wasn’t a one in my garden—but down the path in my neighbor’s garden, there was tons of it! It had all migrated down to her!
This spring, I’m happy to say I had several bunches of “lin” again, some of them growing IN the pathway, others in among my lavender plants, and I took great pleasure in those lovely pale blue flowers, but never again will I presume upon Nature necessarily providing them to me every year—it will be as Nature chooses!!
My garden came with a huge garden of lavender, all I have had to do in it is pull out some of the old woody ones and plant new ones. But what I love is moseying around in my garden and finding other little clumps of lavender there where I never planted any: along the north side of the house for example, or in among the irises, or down in the lower garden!
This year, there were, scattered all over the garden and also on the hillside above my garden, patches of pink flowers, definitely wild, but which I had never seen before and certainly not in such profusion. Will they be back again next year? Maybe, maybe not.
. Every year I get lots of surprise wild orchids in my garden. I’m told that wild orchids grow where the air is very pure which pleases me. They pop up anywhere, under my back stairway, in the shadowy slope below the house that descends to the little main road of our village, up at the very top of the back stone steps leading up to the top of the garden. I’ve come to recognize their large glossy leaves and when we do our annual late spring grass and weed mowing, I go around the garden first with my pruning shears cutting carefully around the orchids so F will see them and they won’t get mown down. This year there is a whole group of them on the east side of the garden, just under the forsythia—some with delicate white blooms all up and down the stalk, others with just a purple tipped flower at the very top….a whole exotic garden growing of its own will—and Nature’s, naturellement!
Along the back path, I noticed this year two very tall green plants growing just a couple feet away from each other. I knew I’d never planted them and I wondered what they would produce. The other day I went outside, and they both had bloomed: a large taper on each one with up and down rows of yellow flowers—looking like immense yellow candles. I have no idea what they are….and realized I need a book on wild flowers in France to help me identify some of the garden surprises!
Other wild flowers that have come on their own to my garden are Queen Anne’s lace, wildflower which I love not only because of its beautiful lacey white blooms but because it always makes me think of my grandmother Dill who first pointed it out to me, and wild red poppies like the ones you see in the famous Monet painting—I’m absolutely delighted I’m finally getting red poppies in my garden, I’ve been wanting them for ages and even tried throwing seeds around once without results—but here they are now, who knows how or why?! Another regular to my garden also is Blue Chardon, with its prickly leaves and prickly blue flowers and from which one can make a bouquet to last all winter. A huge one seems to be coming up just next to our bamboo this year.
But the very biggest surprise in my garden came last year, and it’s an even BIGGER surprise this year! Last year, right next to my Queen Elizabeth rose, I suddenly saw lots of green runners, and in looking at them closely, recognized them from Grandma and Mother’s gardens—sweet peas! Where did they come from? I never planted them. But they grew thick and heavy and I finally had to put a couple trellises against the stone wall to train them up and away from my roses, and they bloomed all summer, fragrant deep rose colored flowers. This year, I’ve got about quadruple the number of sweet peas and they have spread all over the yard, back and front. I found some at the foot of a cypress tree and trained them up so that they are blooming all around it. Others are in the iris gardens. Others up in the rock garden. And in my front garden where they first began I had to put up a third trellis! I know I will have to probably cut some of them out at the end of the summer if next summer I don’t want a garden full of sweet peas and nothing else—but what a wonderful flower it is nonetheless, and not the least because it just flew on its own into my garden, and clearly is thriving here!
At the beginning of my life as a gardener, I was distraught if I planted something and it didn’t do well or didn’t take, died or just disappeared. I used to make “flower maps” of everything I had planted, try to keep track of it all, but as some things vanished and new things appeared, my “maps” became quickly out of date. Now I’m much more philosophical as a gardener. I know for every plant I lose, Nature will spring one of its surprises on me, something new and wonderful will appear. I don’t let my garden get to the jungle state—but at the same time I leave it a certain amount of freedom to just “do its own thing”. And so, hand in hand, Nature and I take care of this little plot of land loaned to me for a few blissful years.
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