Bookish Thursday - Guest Post - Lessons Learned From A Reluctant Gardener by Carmen Leal

In conjunction with last week's post on Carmen Leal's book When Love Wags a Tail, I have the pleasure of offering you a guest post written by the author.

Lessons Learned From a Reluctant Gardener

Back home in Hawaii we had mango trees, gardenia, plumeria, bananas and lots of other plants that are not able to survive in Zone 5B. Until we moved to Wisconsin, I had no idea what a hardiness zone was. Everything we had didn’t require much care, and so not only were the plants all new-to-me, but I quickly learned how much work it is to garden. 

There’s always someone more knowledgeable about any topic, and that was the case when it came to taming my wild garden when I didn’t know where to begin. I became active in my neighborhood and learned about a rain garden grant through our local Rotary’s beautification committee. We started there because of the backyard flooding, and the native plants with their deep roots solved the problem. 

The best thing I did was to join the Wisconsin Gardening Facebook Group.  I immediately had over 45,000 members ready to answer questions. They encouraged me when I felt like a complete failure and some even gave me plants. In the six years since we started this gardening journey, we’ve been able to share many plants with others throughout our town and neighboring communities. 

When it comes to planting it really is all about location and understanding the sun and water requirements so that flowers and shrubs can flourish. A weed is just a plant growing in a place where it’s not meant to be. Using a plant identifier app helped me to differentiate between a weed and a plant that I might want to keep.   

Along the way I ended up with plants that filled space, but didn’t always thrive. Hostas are easy to grow, but the ones I was gifted didn’t tolerate sun. By August they looked terrible no matter how much I watered them. I finally gave them to someone with a shady area and I replaced them with sun-loving sedum. 

That first year in Wisconsin we tried to figure out the easiest and cheapest way to create beauty in our new environment. To make it even more interesting we had moved into a house built in 1875 that needed, and still needs, lots of love and money. It’s hard to believe we took on two major projects at the same time. 

I’ve made many mistakes along the way, but I’ve learned that gardens are incredibly forgiving. I can’t control the weather, if my neighbors weed or not, and if those weeds will end up in my yard. For the record, neither neighbor weeds so both fence lines are a battle zone. 

If you have visited my website, you’ve seen that my tag line is Storyteller, Coconut’s Mom, Reluctant Gardener. I’ve gotten better than when I started, but I admit to breathing a sigh of relief when gardening season is over.

The biggest two lessons I’ve learned is that no garden is perfect but there’s perfection in imperfections.

 

Now for me to beat the 90+ temperatures forecast for today in my own garden and get a bit of watering done.