Gin & Tonic Gardener
Gardening friends are in a category all by themselves. You don’t necessarily know much about them or them you, but like new parents at a day-care centre, you have your “babies” in common, and are eager to share experiences and learn from each other.
I know that my gardening friend, Glenn Miller, is originally from Mount Pearl. I know he now gardens in St. George, N.B., and is a past-president of his local garden club. I know he maintains strong family ties with home because he looks me up when he comes home. He looks me up because, despite a considerable age difference, we’re garden friends.
Age doesn’t matter to garden friends. I’ve been to Glenn’s garden; he’s been to mine. Our garden sizes and gardening styles are quite different.
That’s about all I know, but we sort of clicked and so I took him to Daughter’s property when we were starting to plan her garden. When he comes home in May, I’m hoping to get him out to Heart’s Content.
Glenn and his partner Stephen have spent the past 15 years creating a beautiful, well-manicured garden paradise on the banks of the St. John River. It is peaceful and serene and I love it. But let’s face it, nothing I am personally involved with, garden or otherwise, will ever be well manicured, so it’s a good thing I can find serenity amidst my own style of casual chaos.
I sense that Glenn could just as easily turn his imagination to something more tangled than tamed, more Copy House than Manor House, so I am looking forward to his ideas.
Besides, any gardener who claims to have gotten rid of Japanese knotweed deserves mucho respect. Cutting it down and spraying weed killer into each stalk didn’t work for me. Burning the roots in a hot fire didn’t work for Glenn and Stephen, but they were finally able to bury it under 10 feet of fill.
I don’t know how long ago that was, but, I gotta tell you, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s slowly making its way back to the surface.
Glenn writes that they now have a problem with horsetail that came in with some purchased soil and rivals knotweed for persistence. Horsetail isn’t one that I’ve heard Newfoundland or Labrador gardeners complain about; does it grow here? Has anyone had a problem with it? I can’t find anything online about its zone requirements, but the pictures do resemble things I’ve seen growing on the side of the road. Any made-in-Newfoundland solutions?
Some advice that Glenn offers up to beginning gardeners: “Don't rush in; your tastes will change. Also, if you make a fish pond, go big and deep (to keep the fish). We have to bring them in each fall, a pain in the a--.”
Their pond is from a preformed liner that is four feet deep, which is fairly common. Interestingly, in some St. John’s garden ponds of the same depth, fish hibernate quite happily in a semifrozen state. Given my aversion to anything in the garden that needs any coddling, never mind paining my nether region, I think I’d leave some fish in and see what happens. Glenn and Stephen drain the pond each fall and scrub it down every spring. That’s dedication.
Last year, Glenn and Stephen had water hyacinths in the pond, and when it was time to take the fish out, they put the hyacinths into the wheelbarrow for the compost bin and left them there overnight. The next morning, while dumping the wheelbarrow, Stephen spotted two baby goldfish, one dead, one alive. They then discovered over 50 tiny fish that apparently hide in the water plants to avoid being eaten by the mature goldfish. Who knows how many fish are left in a pond even if you do take in the ones you can find?
Once you put the seasonal fish back in the spring, they might be met by a few livyers and once they start mingling, who’s to know if the extra ones you find in the fall are this year’s offspring or last year’s?