The Cottage Garden

"He who persuades a man to garden [will have] transformed a drone into a bee, and . . . done more to keep his brother from drunkenness than all the pamphlets that were ever printed . . . He will have added not only to our respectability but to our food supply."

Samuel Reynolds Hole (1819-1904), Dean of Rochester, quoted in The Cottage Garden (2011) by Twigs Way.

Some English Victorians apparently expected the cottage garden to feed the body, promote character, preserve the soul, and keep one away from the local pub. I like to imagine our little house in Chicago as a bit like a cottage, and the small garden plots I've created around the house have a nice cottage-like blend of the practical and the decorative.

Gardening has not, however, done much to promote a spirit of temperance. Whenever I call it a day in the garden, I stand around sipping wine — fussing, scheming, and admiring. And a primary purpose of the back garden is to create a good outdoor dining space.

I started gardening, at least in part, because keeping a descent looking lawn seemed hopeless — and somewhat pointless considering how small our lot is. But after more than ten years of puttering, I suppose I have become slightly obsessed with the whole thing.

That's not so say I'm a master gardener. My gardening habits are a constant tension between getting it just so and not making my family crazy. I'm unwisely optimistic when the garden catalogs appear in January, and I usually concede defeat in mid-August when it's too damned hot to deal with weeds.

Therefore, if I'm going to share my gardening adventures with a wider audience, I should probably establish some expectations, so that readers are not too disappointed when they discover the paucity of horticultural wisdom to be gleaned here.  This is probably what one needs to know:

·      My husband, Greg, and I bought our house almost 11 years ago. We have an 8-year-old son named Clark.

·      My real job is stay-at-home dad and part-time freelance writer (mostly medical writing).

·      The entire property — not the garden — is 25 feet by 100 feet.

·      I'm not a super urban-gardener who provides a substantive amount of my family's food supply, but I have a few friends who are such gardeners.

·      I have canned exactly once in my adult life (rhubarb chutney).

·      I have three rain barrels and a small rain garden for overflow, but until we manage to put in some pebble walks, the entire back garden will continue to serve as overflow during downpours.

·      I have a plastic compost bin that looks a bit like an oversized kimchi pot.

·      I don't use chemical fertilizers, but I can't claim to be strictly organic, because not all the produce I buy is organic. That would mean, of course, the compost bin has nonorganic vegetable peels and whatnot.

·      I really do like gardening — and wine.

Here are photos of the gardens in their current state.

The front garden

The right side is in the shade almost all day. The left side gets hot afternoon sun. The parkway suffers a great deal of abuse.

The side garden

This tiny plot of land actually belongs to the neighbor, but the neighbor has no compelling reason to deal with this. The entrance to our house faces this shady area, and the neighbors let me do as I please with the space. 

The back garden

This is the back garden as seen from the dormer window in Clark's bedroom. The peonies and irises were lined up along the fence when we moved in and the rest was a lawn, by which I mean creeping Charlie. We planted the crab apple tree and the rest. The two boxes on the right toward the back are Clark's. The mulched area may be a pebbled patio someday — after Clark is out of college. (The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is Nala.)

The bottom of the garden (where the fairies live)

This is home to an amethyst beautyberry shrub and enough rhubarb for me to be dubbed a "rhubarb supplier" by my friend, Marie. It's also where I grow asparagus, two or three tomato plants, and sugar pumpkins, which grow up the trellis. Clark's collection of crabapple limbs and branches is on the right. Last year we made a rough lean-to.

So this is gardening with wine. And I should probably mention I'm also not a wine connoisseur.