MY GARDENING LIFE - A NOSTALGIC REVIEW

By Ronnie Brancazio

I have never been one for looking back, but have instead tried to focus on the present moment and the future - healthier, I thought! Much to my surprise, however, I now find myself reviewing my long journey as a gardener to see what I have learned and how things have evolved in my own garden and in the larger world of gardening/horticultural trends. And “what a long strange trip it's been” to quote the song!

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I wanted to divide this review into the separate categories of My Own Journey and Trends in Gardening/Horticulture, but that turns out to be impossible because - whether we realize it or not - everything we do is shaped by what is going on in the larger world! So I will start by describing my own Gardening History and then look at how almost all my planting and plant care decisions were shaped by what I was reading and hearing from others.

I came late to gardening since I grew up in an apartment and I don’t even remember seeing a plant on a windowsill! When I got married we lived in an apartment for five years, during which time I learned about houseplants and had a lot of fun buying, decorating with, and caring for all sorts of foliage plants. I collected a great many books in those pre-internet years, and loved poring over them.

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We then bought a house in Flushing, Queens, and here I’ve stayed for 58 years! When we bought the house there were quite a few young shrubs around the small property, a border of not-so-great perennials (did I even know what they were? No), and one very scraggly rose bush right by the back door which bloomed for a few minutes in the spring then just tore at us coming and going for the rest of the year. 

When I started gardening I was also a brand new mother with limited time and zero knowledge (about plants or babies), so all we did was rip out the rose bush, put up a fence, and fill a few half-barrels with impatiens. And so it stayed for several years. 

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Jumping forward about 5 years, I suddenly became a serious gardener! Not sure why, but I was a stay-at-home mom with a creative urge and apparently an innate love of plants that I wasn’t previously aware of. Who knew? I made a friend, MaryEllen, who lived around the corner, and we plunged into gardening together. We shopped the catalogs, went to the garden centers (Keil Bros, Garden World, Martin Viette, Hicks), and gifted each other with gorgeous gardening books and fancy equipment. My first steps were to get window boxes for the windows facing the patio, and replacing the pitiful half-barrels with a border inside the fence.

And this is where we must look at the trends of the time, and how they shaped my decisions and activities. First of all, one had to dig the new bed at least a foot deep, enrich the soil, and re-till every year. Then, we bought soil test kits or sent out samples for testing, and fertilized accordingly. We then planned very colorful borders with annuals featured at the garden centers, with each season bringing  even more spectacular hybrids! We weeded and mulched, fed often, and above all else - KILLED THE PESTS! We sprayed, we spread poison, we hand-picked bugs (well, that’s still ok), You know where I’m going with this! We also tidied up our gardens for the winter by cutting everything back and removing all debris.

After a while, buying all those annuals got pricey, so we started growing our own plants from seed under lights, and this was a time-consuming but very interesting and satisfying hobby to get us through the winter. NOTHING is more fun than browsing seed catalogs, and we would each make a wish list, then get together and place a joint order, to save money. We invested in grow lights and used jiffy-7s. We each started about 200 seedlings, and later spent days transplanting them up into 3”x3” pots, then gradually hardening them off and finally planting them in the ground and various containers. Whew, I’m exhausted just describing it, but we were young and having fun!

During those years, we got interested in pressing and drying flowers, created a little business called “Forget-Me-Not (Art From the Garden), and did craft fairs and special orders. This also shaped our plant growing decisions to favor “Good Pressers and dryers”, which was one development shaped by our own needs rather than larger trends.

Another fast forward, to the tragedy of losing MaryEllen and thus my gardening pal. But she had already given me the best gift possible, which was LIHS! She had become a member and encouraged me to join, which I did when I finally was able to. And here I am, loving my participation!

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And what is the current status of my garden, as influenced by our greater knowledge about gardening, horticulture, and the planet? 

Well, I’m older and thus have to get more professional help with grounds care, although I still plant and tend my own flowers and greenery. I now get much of my gardening advice from the Internet rather than books, which is a great loss! I still do buy wonderful garden books, but they tend to be about gardeners’ lives, plant science, or wise musings, rather than about how-to. And of course, most of my learning comes from our LIHS Speakers and our sharing of knowledge.
I am following the wise advice to plant more Natives and Pollinator-Friendly Perennials, to leave clean-up for the spring so insects have a place to winter over, to use NO pesticides, and to keep learning about what we need to do for the sake of the larger environment.

I don’t do any garden preparation other then spreading my home-made compost, and I am trying to select in-ground perennials that need minimal care (lavenders, I thank you). I use annuals and long-blooming perennials in every kind of planter I can find, to make for a colorful patio seating area, and this year I am going to concentrate on the new mini-edibles that are being developed for containers. And of course I still grow those annuals and perennials which press well, for my own enjoyment!

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I want to conclude by sharing the wise advice that Voltaire offered at the end of “Candide”. After going out into the world as a naive young man and encountering every possible disaster, Candide comes home sadder but wiser, settles down with his love Cunegonde, and realizes that “We must cultivate our garden” (“Il faut cultiver notre jardin”). I believe this was meant both literally and figuratively. And so we must!

Happy Gardening!