<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Friday, March 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Garden Life: You’ve got to get hands dirty to be a gardener

By Robb Rosser
Published: November 6, 2014, 12:00am

The best way to learn anything, including how to garden, is by doing. You can study and read and go to lectures but at some point you have to get your hands dirty to become a gardener. Modern technology puts information at our fingertips but the masters of any craft still learn the ropes by actually doing what they do so well. Concert pianists play the piano. Painters put paint to canvas. Gardeners garden.

We first decide to learn more about gardening because everything about it feels good to us. It’s exhilarating to dig in the earth. It’s fascinating to watch over the years as compost mixed with native soil becomes a crumbly loam. As we untangle pot-bound roots we imagine them growing down into the soil, taking nutrients up into the plant. We like to see a plant in detail, noticing the structure, bark and scent. The lucky gardener is the one who goes into it for sheer joy and learns something along the way.

If becoming accomplished is important to you, that’s even better. However, give the quest for expertise the time it truly takes. We would never judge a child on their performance because they crawled before they began to walk. If your intention is to make a garden and grow your favorite golden yellow perennial, planting correctly is the most important lesson you can learn. Learning Latin is valuable as well but Rudbeckia fulgida “Goldsturm” will become a black-eyed Susan whether you know the name or not.

There is a lot to learn if you want to become accomplished in any field of study. That’s certainly true of gardening. Nonetheless, no amount of information will make us the master of a skill. There is great value to reading books, listening to lectures and sharing information with fellow gardeners. We become the master of a skill only after a period of hands-on experience. We can’t plant without learning to dig. With every new task, we add to our knowledge.

No method of learning is more valuable than being an apprentice. Working in the field with someone who already has the skill you desire is the ultimate learning method. It does us all good to take the occasional lesson in modesty by following another person’s directions. Even if you have read every book on planting roses, nothing compares to actually doing the project with another gardener.

You may already know how deep to dig the hole and the proper mix of soil, compost and fertilizer. An experienced gardener can show you how to spread the roots over the top of your clenched fist before planting, how to remove air pockets from the soil and use a shovel handle to place the rose at the proper planting depth. Hands-on experience and the occasional good laugh together are keystones to inspiration.

Learning involves getting it wrong as well as getting it right. Edison made many unsuccessful attempts before arriving at a functioning light bulb. Although Edison did not actually invent the light bulb, he did pursue the creation of a successful, long-lasting bulb. One story suggests that a reporter asked him, “How did it feel to fail a thousand times?” Edison replied that he didn’t fail a thousand times. “The light bulb,” he said, “was an invention with one thousand steps.”

As we learn we see with different eyes. One of my biggest design mistakes was planting Euphorbia griffithii at the base of a Prunus “Kwanzan” flowering cherry. Although I was happy with the performance of both plants, to my eyes the brick-orange bracts of the euphorbia clashed with the oversized, hot pink cherry blossoms. Just one year later, gardening magazines were touting the same brash, bold contrast of strident colors in their photographs. Over time I have learned to smile and say, “I meant to do that.”

If you garden for the pleasure of gardening, you will find great joy in the process. Ultimately, anyone who dedicates their efforts to a task simply for the love of doing it will find, in time, that they are actually quite capable. It’s the nature of the universe that ideas, facts, ability and opportunity come to the person who seeks to become more proficient. Even the master knows that the world is ever changing and that learning is a lifelong process. To be pleased with our garden at the end of the day may be all the mastery any one of us needs.


Robb Rosser is a WSU-certified master gardener. Reach him at Write2Robb@aol.com

Loading...