Why Do I Garden?

Personal Gardening History

I don't think I had a choice but to become a gardener. It is the best way for me to remember both my mother and my German grandmother.

I was born in Germany to a German mother and career army father. This meant a lot of travelling around as a kid. We spent every 2 - 3 years in Germany, and the rest of the time in beautiful (NOT) Lawton, Oklahoma. While in Germany, we would often visit my grandparents and I would stay with them for weeks at a time in the summers.

My grandparents (Oma and Opa in German) had a acre plot in the hills above the town, Gelnhausen, where they were relocated after being thrown out of Czechoslovakia during WWII. They acquired the land when my mother was a young teenager, and all three of them worked during the weekends to make a garden. They hauled rocks out of the hills above and made a large stone terrace at the top of the slope to the left. On this terrace they build a small garden house and an outhouse behind it. On the right side of a central pathway was a long, shallow stepped rock terrace garden. I remember it being planted with pansies (today still my favorite spring flower) and sometimes strawberries. There was also lots of red rock sedum (Stienkraut). At the top of the terrace garden stood two very tall, narrow fir trees which Oma told me were transplanted from the woods as tiny seedlings.

Below the terrace garden was a very large cherry tree, and at the bottom of the garden on the right side was an old, gnarly apple tree in which Opa put up a seat and tire swing for my brother and I. There was a narrow, grass path going straight up the middle of the bordered by narrow flower beds on each side. Planted in these beds, and self-seeded throughout the grass, were enormous lupines. These flowers were in all colors, and very fragrant. I have a black and white picture of me at about 1 1/2 years old, sitting on a rock of the flower border, clutching two huge lupin stalks for balance; they tower over me. About a year after Opa died, Oma had to give up the garden. She was getting too old to maintain it anymore. I cried for loss of that garden as much as I cried over the loss of my grandfather.

Once my father retired from the army, we settled in Lawton for good. My mother started to garden, now that we knew that we were not going to leave it in three years. Our lot when we bought the house was had a large back yard with grass bordered by a cedar privacy fence, and that was it.

Mom and dad first added a large covered patio right off the back of the garage. We kept an iron table and chair set out there that mom found at a garage sale. Mom planted huge red cannas right at the base of the patio, and in the summer they made the patio into a room bordered with huge tropical flowers.

Mom and I slowly, in trail and error and battling 100+ summers, pure black gumbo clay soil, and 17" rainfall a year, started to experiment with plants, and especially roses. I bought our first roses myself with allowance money. I have no idea what they were labeled as but they were supposed to be one pink, one yellow, one deep red, and one white. Well, two of them (pink and red one) died immediately, and the other two lived and bloomed, both red. This was my first disappointing experience with mis-labeled plants, and it throws me into a fit of anger even today. (I will NEVER, EVER order from Wayside again!!!) Dad died in 1983, and mom, John, and I were left to work on the garden.

The large rectangle of grass slowly turned into a rounded grass patch with roses growing around the perimeter of the yard, but this took about 10 years. In the early 80's, long before the old rose craze, Mom read a library book on old roses that had some addresses of rose nurseries in back. It was Trevor Griffith's Classic Roses. She ordered some, and was permanently hooked. In a short three years time, we went from having a few mangy hybrid teas to having a few mangy hybrid teas (what, get rid of a rose? never, wait till it dies...) and about 50+ old roses of all sorts.

I don't think that mom loved any other plant as much as she did those old roses. We would go around the garden in the morning, coffee in hand, seeing what was new. She would pronounce their French, German, and Latin names with a flourish of pride. She could speak French, had had Latin in school, so she could correctly pronounce them all. Mom and John, my brother, build an arbor (that I designed) in the back of the yard. On the left side was a huge Rosa Mundi rosebush which would be covered completely with hotpink and white peppermint striped flowers every spring. This was mom's favorite rose, and mine, too. Behind Rosa Mundi were planted a group of trumpet lilies. One of them was Black Dragon, which one rainy spring, grew to over 15 feet tall! Another favorite was Sea Foam.

The first experience with my own garden was when I taught for a year in Ringling, Oklahoma, a small hicktown on the Oklahoma/Texas border. I lived in Ardmore in a garage apartment. Once spring came, I was positively ITCHING to go out and look around the garden, but I didn't have one. I asked my land lady if I could plant stuff and proceeded to dig up a few flower beds. The climate in Ardmore is completely different than Lawton. We had much more rain, more humidity, huge pecan trees (I had never gardened in the shade), and rich loamy soil. I had some Texas bluebonnets (an annual lupin), and some pink and white roses, The Fairy and climbing White Dawn. Most of my flowers were in the pink/blue/white color range. My landlady, who worked at a nursery, gave me an entire flat of annuals. I didn't want to offend her, but there were the ugliest things I'd ever seen. They were in lurid shades of deep magenta, chrome orange, yellow, and red. I planted them in a group in the shade where I knew they wouldn't do well.

My mother never saw my first attempt at my very own garden. She died of cancer in May that year. I held a wake for her at the house, and it seems that spring her garden was the most beautiful it had ever been. My brother told me that he stood out there looking at the roses and cried and cried. I moved back to her house, went back to school to learn computers, and then moved to Norman, Oklahoma where most of my friends lived and where there were much better job opportunities.

At my rent house, I had a huge garden, front and back, with some of mom's old roses that I had dug up and planted. I also bought more old roses of my own. In the summer of 1993, I finally got the courage up to sell mom's house, and with my half of the money, Michael and I bought the house we have now on 2 1/2 acres. I took mom's roses with me. Matter of fact, I can see the tops of Duchess de Brabant right now out my computer room window. It is covered with pink buds that were frozen to the plant a month ago. Rosa Mundi, our favorite, has a prominent place in my old rose border.

When I sold mom's house, I went back to the garden go see if there were any more plants that I could dig up. The garden was a complete jungle. R. alba semi-plena was 8' tall, Pink Grootendorst was a 12' dome of pink flowers. Most of the roses had trunks a good six inches across. I took cuttings, but they didn't make it. I have since bought my own versions of many of mom's roses. Her roses had grown to such huge sizes in the years since she died with absolutely no care, no watering whatsoever. My renters didn't even open the back door.

You can see now where my love of roses and old roses comes from. I am trying to find a cherry tree that will grow in Oklahoma, since the thaw/freeze cycle of our springs kill the blossoms. I am also desperately trying to find some lupines that will grow here as well. I have some Thompson and Morgan seeds that include two species lupines that are supposedly heat tolerant and perennial. Texas Bluebonnets are beautiful, but they are just not the same as the four foot giants of Oma's garden.

As you can see, I really don't have much choice but to be a gardener.