Good gardening demands courage to change

Have you ever had the uncontrollable urge to wipe out your garden and start over? Just pull it all up and start again with a new slate?

If you are having that urge now, congratulations! Urge on. Plan, scheme, organize your thoughts toward spring and build that garden again. The desire to start a garden over is not uncommon. We all go through it at one time or another.

What was I thinking when I planted all those currents in the middle of the garden? Sure, they’re easy to get at and used to be a cinch to pick, but really, they ran amuck years ago. Why are they still there? When they were cute and tidy they looked really great marching around the edges of the little courtyard at the garden’s center. Now they sprawl wildly about in total disregard for their neighbors, some they seem to have eaten up years ago when I wasn’t looking.

Gone is the lovely rock work along the courtyard edge, buried under prolific currant growth. Gone is the symmetry. Long gone is the ease of picking as I scramble through thickets to get the coveted berries into my freezer each fall.

For haven’s sake, those currents outlived their place in the garden long ago. Next spring they are gone, moved to a nearby hill side where they can sprawl to their hearts’ content and scramble over any number of small, innocent weeds without once looking back. It’s a fine plan and I feel better already.

Sometimes change needs to happen not because we’ve made some error in judgment, but because we forget that a garden is a living, evolving entity unto itself. Once planted, it just sort of goes its own way. To be a good gardener it is mandatory to revisit the design from time to time and make sure the garden’s thrill of being alive has not killed your thrill of being its keeper.

As Alaskans, we are particularly lucky. New beginnings are in our blood. The snow covers the tired summer remains each fall only to melt a few months later bringing an expansion of new possibilities. In the mean time, we have a forced period of gardening rest — no weeds to pull, no hoses to drag about, no dead-heading, not even a flower to pick. I can’t imagine what horror it must be to garden in, say, Florida. That would be a gardening nightmare. So burnt out am I by fall that the thought of walking past the garden without so much as a backward glance is nothing short of liberating.

I think the difference between a good gardener and a remarkable one is often nothing more than the courage to revise.

As northern gardeners we have all winter to redesign our stagnant glory. If you’ve always longed for a patch of lilies where you have something that excites you less, take no prisoners. Tear out those boring beauties. Give them to the neighbor, plant them in the road easement, put them on Craig’s List, but for heaven sake make them go away. In their place, boldly plant your 500 lilies in waves of bright, vivid color.

Go for your gardening dreams. Experiment and enjoy.

My own revision usually starts in November with small seeds of curiosity as I glance at the garden. its skeletal structure undeniably obvious for the world to see; not at all like I think it should be, not nearly as graceful and proportioned as I remember. It’s time to redesign, to rip and tear.

Revision experience is invaluable. It gives us energy, re-awakens our base instincts for color and balance. It challenges our knowledge and stretches our nerve. In short, it’s good for us.

Sure, it’s always sad to say good-bye to something we have enjoyed, something that has filled our photo albums with color and light. Perhaps it is time to move on and introduce a new page to the album, to be bold and march forward with our shovels in hand.

I see some dangerously unnerving gardening in my future, but there’s one urge I think best to bury now. The urge to talk to my husband about such plans is, I think, best left on the shelf for now. Sometimes the element of surprise is vital for the garden and its helper.

Sally Koppenberg is a garden and food designer. She is owner of Stonehill Gardens and The Red Beet, a nursery and catering company specializing in Alaska grown foods, trees, shrubs, perennials and native plants. Contact her at stonehill@gci.net.