{"id":7621,"date":"2021-03-06T14:09:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T19:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=7621"},"modified":"2021-03-06T14:09:59","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T19:09:59","slug":"picturing-the-garden-on-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2021\/03\/picturing-the-garden-on-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Picturing the Garden on Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Princess Margareta climbing English rose meets H.F. Young clematis.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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OTHER PEOPLE <\/span><\/strong>bake bread, knit sweaters, craft origami. I draw pictures. Sometimes on random scraps of paper, but more often on pads of graph paper strewn around the house. I don\u2019t have any actual drawing talent, which is a bummer since\u00a0my great-grandfather was an artist<\/a>\u00a0and my sister is, in the immortal words of my mother, \u201cvery clever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pink and White Roses, Paul A. Putzki, c. 1900<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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But I sure do like to make plans.\u00a0It probably says way too much about me that when I\u2019m anxious, creating make-believe worlds in little square boxes calms me down. But I\u2019m going to leave that on the floor like so many discarded Legos. For now, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve renovated our tiny kitchen three different ways on paper. And I\u2019ve designed a fantasy kitchen with wrap-around windows, a baking station, a shallow floor-to-ceiling pantry, a user-friendly island, and big glass doors opening on to the deck. Light! I love light!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve sketched (aka scribbled) countless variations of this fantasy design \u2014 a room we\u2019d actually have to add on to the southern end of our house as opposed to renovating the kitchen\u00a0in situ<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And stuffed away in drawers and file folders are years of garden designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In fact, just this week I drew a plan for a big (35\u2019 x 40\u2019) fenced vegetable and cutting flower garden that\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0(theoretically, if we wanted to take this plunge) be located in the open field in front of our house. We\u2019d have to run water down there. We\u2019d have to empty our pockets for fencing, soil amendments, irrigation hoses, the whole enchilada. We\u2019d need a lot of help building this time around. But unlike the fantasy kitchen, which actually makes my teeth hurt when I think about how much it would cost, the fantasy garden has been tugging at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I detect a dangerous longing lodging in my bones.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had my small farm, I had my farm stand. I said I was done with all that, and I was overjoyed at my partner\u2019s generosity in immediately building me a small vegetable garden here at my new home. It would be so perfect, so manageable, so tidy. And it was, and it is, and we\u2019ve already added on to it. Twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We started with the same three-square design I used for my very first Island garden in 2009. I plugged the virtues of that little design in an article I wrote for Martha\u2019s Vineyard magazine several years ago called\u00a0Holy Homegrown!\u00a0<\/a>That baby-bear garden, along with a mama bear and papa bear version, were beautifully illustrated by Fae Kontje-Gibbs for that piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, I pushed aside any thoughts of bigger vegetable gardens to concentrate on a perennial garden plan instead. This was a completely absorbing depository for my Covid anxiety, which had mostly alighted on\u00a0the subject of my 90-year-old dad living alone in Delaware<\/a>. It had been years since I\u2019d given much thought to perennials, and the open space between our deck and driveway was daunting. It would be a good excuse to call Dad, the Master and Commander Gardener, more often. He\u2019s the man who passed the graph-paper gene down to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My gardener friend Laura Coit brought me a stack of books to get started, and one immediately stuck to me \u2013\u00a0The Perennial Gardener\u2019s Design Primer<\/a>. So many sample garden plans! The \u201cSunny Four-Season Border\u201d and \u201cThe Easy Care Entrance.\u201d The \u201cFantastic Spring Fling\u201d and the \u201cMade for Shade.\u201d A meadow garden, a cottage garden, a white garden, even a secret garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My brain on graph paper. Scary.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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They all sounded (and looked) so wonderful, but I soon realized that creating a perennial garden was like solving a giant logic puzzle. Venn diagrams would come in handy if you were that sort. The challenge was fun, but keeping track of all the variables was mind-numbing. As soon as I\u2019d wrangle all the deer-proof, long-blooming, dry-soil tolerating, bee-friendly, Zone 7, mildew-resistant plants on to one list, I\u2019d have to start peeling off the ones that had ugly foliage, grew six feet tall, or spread invasively. And that was before considering flower color or leaf shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I persisted and finally set my pencil down, many pages of an extra-large pad of graph paper later. I went plant shopping while my partner heroically excavated the sand and rock out of what would turn out to be three (not one) perennial beds by the end of the summer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I can\u2019t wait to see what\u2019s lived through the winter and how everything looks in the second year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as much as I love perennials for landscaping, I\u2019m truly obsessed with cutting flowers, which are driving this new obsession with the big garden down the hill. The big garden would have room for long rows of zinnias and dahlias (yes, here in Deer Central, even cutting flowers need to be fenced), as well as room for all of my favorite vegetables, including space hogs like potatoes and perennials like asparagus. Plus berries\u2014 and fruit trees!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For so many reasons, I hope I\u2019ll let go of this fantasy soon. There\u2019s still a wee bit of room to expand the little garden, anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then again, I just got my friend\u00a0Ellen Ecker Ogden’s<\/a>\u00a0new book,\u00a0The New Heirloom Garden<\/a>\u00a0in the mail. And guess what it is full of? Garden plans! Beautiful and smart designs, each with a different theme, and \u2026 oh dear, I think we\u2019re doomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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P.S.<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you to all of you who continue to email and comment on the blog since the reboot! So nice to be reconnected. If you feel comfortable, I encourage you to post your thoughts in the comments section under the blog, so that we can share conversations with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Book Recs This Week<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The New Heirloom Garden<\/em>, by Ellen Ecker Ogden<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Perennial Gardener’s Design Primer<\/em>, by Stephanie Cohen and Nancy J. Ondra<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Floret Farm’s Discovering Dahlias<\/a><\/em>, by Erin Benzakein<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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LOOKING FOR NEW RECIPES?\u00a0<\/strong>Visit\u00a0cookthevineyard.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0sign up for the free weekly newsletter<\/a>. (Something I do as part of my day job.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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OTHER PEOPLE bake bread, knit sweaters, craft origami. I draw pictures. Sometimes on random scraps of paper, but more often on pads of graph paper strewn around the house. I don\u2019t have any actual drawing talent, which is a bummer since\u00a0my great-grandfather was an artist\u00a0and my sister is, in the immortal words of my mother, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7621"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7647,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions\/7647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}