Giddy to garden
some photos from my favourite place
(this email is long & has a lot of photos, you may need to view it in the substack app to see them all!)
good morning! 2 biz things first: 1) this week is your LAST CHANCE to shop our massive apothecary sale where everything is now 35% off & 2) our fb spring classes & plant walks are scheduled! Check them out & register here.
Ok, so. I’ve been in serious garden dreaming/planning mode. The shift in the weather always does it, the approach of April, the threat of another snowstorm, the soil delivery at the local hardware store, the emergence of the skunk cabbage along the stream, the craving for fresh basil… I am so very ready to get back in the garden!! So, here’s a little garden musing + some photos.
Something I force myself to do is not mess around in the garden until the days are consistently warm. I don’t do much fall clean-up, preferring to leave the stalks and stems to crustify and overwinter as habitat for hibernating insects and whoever else hides there and as fodder for the soil. I collect some seeds but mostly let them blow around in the winter winds and fall where they please then delight in new plants coming up in surprising locations in the spring. Soon I’ll get in there with my clippers and rake and clear out the brush, make space, assess who is coming up and where there’s room to slip in new seedlings. This year I’m expanding the garden a bit—I added 3 new raised beds in the fall and my hope is to build 5 more to complete another row and stick a picnic table in the gap I left between for students to sit at in class. There’s a squash tunnel vision in there too. I’ve got big garden plans, you see, as per usual.
Though the garden is one of my greatest passions, I have a bit of a laissez-faire approach to it in comparison to other serious gardeners I know. I don’t keep records or use excel sheets or make maps of the beds and that sort of thing, but I have my own unwritten rules and tendencies and schedule. I order seeds in the winter, a little overzealously, and then start as many as I think I’ll need. Onions in February, direct seed peas in March, hold off on the cucumbers starts until April, etc. etc.
I grow a lot of perennials, so much of the work of seed-starting and transplanting I did years ago and I just have to fill in the gaps after I’ve harvested enough from the patches to make a significant dent every once in a while. Sometimes I buy plants from other growers who have greenhouses and specialize in things I don’t feel as confident starting in my little basement grow-light situation—locally I’ve purchased from Whistledown Farm and Barkaboom Native Plants, two trustworthy and incredibly knowledgable local plant sources!
My current garden is a big fenced in plot at the farm across the road from our house. I originally started a little garden in our yard 6 or 7 years ago, but outgrew the small, shady space and moved a number of things to the new spot when I decided to expand. Weeds are a big pressure, so I lined the entire border with perennials that would spread easily and create their own, more reliable kind of boundary—Yarrow and Comfrey, Motherwort, Marshmallow, Blue Vervain, last year I added some rose bushes and elder trees. After a few years of battling Gallinsoga, also known as quickweed, I switched to raised beds made from Larch boards from a local mill, which minimized space in a way but also weeding time and exhaustion. Win-win-win.
Though I enjoy growing medicine plants and also eating many wild things, I do love growing classic vegetables and culinary herbs and flowers too. My time at Sparrowbush Farm instilled a deep love of radicchio that I must always assuage. I’m also obsessed with pumpkins and winter squash and just relish the simple joy of a meal or a cup of tea grown all on your own.
Having my kid grow up in and with a garden is extra special to me and helps the fervent garden-loving fire burn longer and stronger. We’ve spent a lot of time together in there since day 1, she helps me pick Calendula and pull potatoes, gorges herself on snap peas and strawberries, and I love seeing her feel the satisfaction of eating food she harvested herself. She turns 4 this spring and I hope her garden love only grows.
It’s certainly a privilege to have space to grow plants. Once there was a time when subsistence gardening was how we all got by and now gardens seem to often be regarded as emblems of wealth and the luxury of more free time. But I do love driving around in our rural area in the summer and spying gardens of all shapes, sizes and varieties in people’s yards, young and old, rich and poor. I don’t think gardens should fade into obscurity or association with the upper class alone—gardens are for everyone, including the birds and the bees. Mine is not perfect or neatly trimmed; most of the time it’s a complete mess, which is how I like it best, flowers tumbling into others, vines twirling around fence posts, rabbits munching on low-hanging beans or cucumbers that I didn’t get to fast enough. I love that gardens take time, just like growing and becoming our truest and best selves does for us—it takes a few (many) years of learning and trial-error and weediness and mishaps and then we bloom bloom bloom and sometimes we don’t and there’s ever ways to improve. I like that very much.
xx hannah
more photos below, you might need to view it in the substack app to see them all!
Beautiful garden pics, Hannah! Wishing you a bountiful upcoming season!