Like Me, My Garden is a Work of Art

I bought my first house in my mid-40’s as the twentieth century rolled into the oughts and thus began my sustained experience with garden. The garden and I have been developing in parallel since that time. The garden came to me at a pivotal moment in my life as peripatetic woman who has spent most of her life running from a nasty case of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). Together, the garden and I, weathered three major stages of evolution: 1) Starved, Parched Wasteland; 2) Semi-Arid and Partially Reclaimed; and, 3) Thriving in a Unique and Constantly Evolving Environment. Ironically, this year, as the pandemic comes to an end and the country reopens after a year’s lock down, may be the best yet, for both of us. Who would have thought? This is how the two of us came to this place and what gardens can tell us about surviving CPTSD.

Starved, Parched, Wasteland

In August 1999, when I rolled up on the shores of the small front yard in front of my ranch style house, both lawn and I were weak, vulnerable, and desperately in need of loving care.

Perched on an escarpment where the Merrimack River had deposited fine sand for centuries, what little soil there was had been added about 50 years ago, was only six inches deep, and was devoid of any worms or nutrients. The grass, dried to a fine crispy gray by the unrelenting sun that baked the lawn most of the day, grew round the central planting — a very large yew about four feet tall with rounded sides and a totally flat top — that had been the pride and joy of the home’s previous owner. Some non-descript foliage huddling against the neighbor’s fence might have been something of interest, but it was hard to tell what was useful and what was weed.

Bad as the front yard looked, I was not in much better shape, having spent decades trying to escape from the emotional pain, anxiety, and negative compulsions of a chaotic childhood that included my parent’s divorce, financial hardship, and other wounds. Like the yard, I would need to give much of myself to change the downward trends in which I was caught.

Thanks to my CPTSD background, I have a hard time making up my mind about important things and frequently vacillate with shame and anxiety over very simple decisions, but the one thing I knew for sure when I got to my first house was that the yew had to go. Maybe making this choice was a starting point, the tide was starting to come in and bringing some needed nourishment into the bay.

I started to dig, poking around in the weeds by the fence. To my surprise there were day lilies, peonies, and a few iris scattered within the grasses there. Day lilies it seemed were able to survive the desert like conditions of the front yard, so day lilies, I decided, would be the first choice for planting.

In the throes of getting a divorce from my first, late in life, very short, and unsuccessful marriage, besides digging in the yard, I joined a newly formed local club for divorced, widowed, and always single people, where I met a recently widowed man who knew something about gardening. Short, plump, speaking in a rich New England accent, his words poured out quickly like the white water section of a fast moving stream, and I was hard put to follow what he was saying. However, he must have been able to understand something of what I was saying because he showed up on a Saturday morning with a pick-up truck, the bed filled with day lilies from his garden and a chain-saw to take down the yew.

Although my first instinct is always to reject help and go it alone, he didn’t wait for me to run through my normal routine and instead threw himself under the yew, flicked on the saw, and got right down to business on delivering the yard from its long-time eye-sore — the yew. As soon as the yew was down and chopped into pieces, he whipped out a shovel and asked me to point to where I wanted the hundred plus day lilies.

I am mistrustful of help, always worried about pay-back, a throw back to my early years, where I learned help or sharing was a kind of resource that usually came with strings. This man, however, didn’t operate on those principals. I found this confusing, but he didn’t notice my dilemma and just went on being good, friendly, and helpful. Both I and the lawn began to improve under this regime of care.

Semi-Arid, Partially Reclaimed

For the last decades, I have been to the garden, what the man has been to me — a caring companion. A concerned other who wanted the best for their significant other, but often unsure of what was actually needed. I bumbled and fumbled, tested and experimented, sometimes in the dark about cause and effect, just hoping I was doing more good than damage.

There was absolutely no blue-print or fix-it manual that would tell me how to reclaim this yard — it had to be trial and error. The sand, sun exposure, and other features all combined to create a unique environment that was probably closest to what you would see in high, dry alpine regions if you can imagine that existing in a suburb close to sea level.

In the same way, there was really no manual for how to get along with me. While all those with CPTSD have some similarities, each of us is uniquely different in the way these traits come together. Like many with CPTSD, I lacked insight, language, and attention to my own most challenging characteristics. I couldn’t identify what I felt, what I needed, or why I might be upset, and even if I could, I didn’t have the language or emotional skills to discuss feelings of any sort.

Over time I learned that in addition to the day lilies, yucca, a cactus that likes snow, thrives in my yard. Yarrow, absinthe, and New England bayberry and asters can stand the conditions. Nothing, however, nothing, likes this funny scrubby place like a good hardy succulent — from hen and chicks to the taller sedums — once I discovered these I was on my way to success. In the same way I figured out what the garden needed, I also figured out what I felt and what I needed.

All of these many years, probably the key thing I did was add manure — every single season, whether it was from the one horse still left in Lowell, or from the wonderfully productive cows at Great Brook Farm. Manure, meaning enrichment and nourishment, were critical for both of us — the yard and the girl. Manure and compost built up in the soil, year after year, despite the road salt thrown up in the winter, and the blazing summer heat — something was changing.

Thriving in a Unique Constantly Evolving Environment

That leads me to this amazing post-pandemic summer (or so I hope it is), which is absolutely the best summer ever for my garden. Everything is thriving, growing in its own funny way, but filling up all the gaps and sparkling with color. Right now there is lots of yellow yarrow, red geranium, and fireman slicker yellow clumping day lilies, but I can see the orange heads of the spreading day lilies starting to bloom and the white vibernum is also plush with big heads. The cat mint (my alternative to lavender) has passed its first flush, but will continue across the summer to entice the neighborhood felines, who lurch from the bushes in early morning. I steal from one clump of spreading sedum ground covers, Stonecrop and Dragon’s Blood, to fill up another forgotten corner, pouring on the “Quick Start” and hoping the new patch will survive the climate-change induced early summer heat. Even though thanks to changing local circumstances, I come to find I am now living in a transitory neighborhood different from the French-Canadian enclave where I thought I had settled, people still pass my garden, smile, and commend my efforts.

I find it hard to believe I am the creator of this amazingly bright and happy spot that gives joy to me and passersby. I have long known I find it hard to be optimistic or accepting of compliments. For many years, as I worked in the garden I was hammered with foreboding and anxiety. It wasn’t that there was anything dangerous working outside, but I was conditioned to feel constant anxiety when doing anything pleasurable. This year the ominous feeling that keeps telling me — “Stop! Stop! Get out of the garden and go do something worthwhile. Go help someone. Who are you to be enjoying yourself!” — has decreased to no more than a dull roar in the background and sometimes, when things are going very well, it almost appears to cease. I didn’t think this could ever happen. I thought I would have to live with it forever like ringing in the ears. This almost silence is a miracle. Maybe, like me, my front yard has trouble, too, accepting that the large round lump of yew is gone and accepting the glory of color and green that it has become.

I have gardened enough to know that every season brings new conditions — the pine tree next door is growing taller, the lilac has developed some kind of shagging bark, and winter could come with seven feet of snow — but I, and the garden, have learned to make use of the most tolerant forms vegetation, accepted the water whether it comes from the sky or the hose, and are willing to be nourished and cultivated as needed. Together, we — the garden and I — are works in progress, making the best of a unique and constantly evolving environment.