How Different Two Gardens Can Be

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to be part of a garden tour.

The occcasion was the annual picnic of the New England Hosta Society.

The picnic is an all-day affair: we tour gardens, we have lunch, and then then offer an auction of plants, often grown by the members. They include many hostas: some new to the market.

It is primarily for members of the Society.

What amazed me was how different were the two gardens we saw that day.

Garden Number 1

The first was a wild garden, a landscape filled with many plants that have been in the same spot for years.

That means of couse that the garden needs upkeep to maintain a certain look.

What I loved about this garden is that the plants made a glorious display: perennials, ornamental grasses, and vines galore. And, of course, many varieties of hostas of various size from tiny plants to plants with enormous leaves.

A variegated hosta circled a large old tree, making the tree catch your eye as you pass by. {below}

Garden Number 2

This garden was pruned to perfection.

Evyerhing was in its place.

There were many plants in containers of various material and of different sizes , which were resting in a sea of mulch to control the weeds.

This property included in the back long open fields for farming. It was a beautiful sunny day so the view of the many fields was particularly stunning.

Here were two gardens, just blocks away from one another, and as different as could be.

James Vick On Gardening

The nineteenth century Rochester, NY seed merchant James Vick encouraged every household to have a garden, no matter what type or size.

Vick’s enthusiasm for gardening was more than merely commercial.  “A taste for the beautiful in gardening, and a true love of flowers among the people,” found expression in many fanciful passages, like the following: “Man may be refined and happy without a garden; he may even have a home of taste, I suppose, without a tree, or shrub, or flower; yet, when the Creator wished to prepare a proper home for man, pure in all his tastes and made in His own image, He planted a garden and placed this noblest specimen of creative power in it to dress and keep it.”

That passage illustrates Vick’s enthusiasm for a garden for every home.

He didn’t care what kind of garden you had, as long as you got in the soil and cultivated one.

A garden tour is truly a time to celebrate the garden.