Everyone likes this natural garden with 2 koi ponds — even herons
It’s calming to gaze into the waters of a koi pond, but Mike Polite also keeps his eyes on the skies.
“We did have a heron back here this year,” Polite says, pointing to the three-level koi pond by his back deck, “and he took out quite a few fish.”
Polite’s garden is quite desirable these days, and not just with the birds. On July 24, you can tour the garden in Jackson, Butler County, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. as part of the Southern Butler County Garden Club’s 13th annual Garden Tour. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 on tour day from 9-10 a.m. in the Cranberry Municipal Center lobby.
Two koi ponds are the highlights of the Polite garden. The second one is on the left side of the yard, with water lilies floating upon it and forget-me-nots and
pretentious backbone of my first garden. This consisted of 22 evergreens named Irish junipers. From a design standpoint, this forced formality in a suburban backyard was all wrong. From a horticultural perspective, it was a disaster. This prickly beast is not a plant for hot, humid regions. I thought that, because a local nursery sold it to me, it was suited to my area. Silly me.
I’m thinking of early mistakes for a few reasons. The pandemic has brought many newbies to gardening, and with them, I imagine, a lot of frustrating moments as plants refuse to grow or live.
Stick with it and take heart. A wise old gardener once told me that we are all just at different places along the same path.
Admittedly, some green thumbs are way ahead. The best gardens tend to be created by obsessive perfectionists. This is because they are intensively planted, and the layers present themselves in both space and time. The owners tend to be torn between a deep sense of pride and a constant vexation. The visitor delights in the garden, while the acegardener cannot sit still.
I am more of a plodder, believing that if I keep at it — planting, sowing, grooming, weeding — that wonderful effects will present themselves, as long as the framework of the garden has been created first.
Failures are par for the course, additions struggle or die, plants that seemed happy for years decline, the rabbits arrive. With each passing growing season, you figure things out. Pansies planted in April will soon grow faint from the approaching heat. Pansies planted in September will last to the end of the year — and perhaps to the following spring.
A mophead hydrangea is at risk from spring frosts, an Annabelle hydrangea is not. A shrub that has outgrown its space can be chopped back or moved. Fava beans planted in October will do better in hot regions such as ours than those sown in March.
In time, you don’t think of the garden as some sort of ledger, with advances in one column and setbacks in another. The whole business is simply one of observation and adjustment.
But is it possible for a gardener to lose mojo, like a songwriter all written out or a blocked artist paralyzed by a blank canvas?
This spring was not my finest. In October, a longawaited order of tulip bulbs arrived: 250 bulbs of three varieties of parrot tulips. These are the big, flamboyant tulips of late April. I do a tulip bash like this every year, typically in a color combo that takes my fancy. I picked a purple-black variety, one that was a saturated red with purple feathering, and a pink-salmon variety.
By February, the leaf tips were poking through the soil, but only a scant few. I waited for the others to catch up, but they never appeared. About 1 in 10 flowered, and when they did, they were early and distorted. Were the bulbs moldy, virused? The bed was not excessively wet. This has never happened to me before.
I couldn’t fret for too long, because I had another disaster. In a narrow bed, I sowed two packets of gomphrena seeds. This is a summer annual that is supposed to be, ahem, foolproof. Once more, nothing but crickets. Well, cicadas, anyway.
In the place of the gomphrena, I have sown the little wiry seeds of cosmos. I wait, feeling in my bones that the summer garden will perk up. It will, won’t it?