Garden Life: Our garden is the face present to the world

“Oh what a beautiful mornin’. Oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a beautiful feelin’, everything’s going my way.”

— Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma”

Fifteen years ago, on March 23, 2000, I wrote my first garden column for The Columbian. Today I’m submitting column No. 781. I still believe that the garden is our voice, as well as the face we present to the world. It’s what our friends, family and visitors see first when they are invited to our homes and into our lives. My friends would be surprised to pull into the driveway of my house and arrive at Versailles, the French royal gardens. It wouldn’t suit their perception of a Northwest garden, or of me.

Twenty years ago, I preferred a more casual form of country gardening. My three and a half acre garden was landscaped with a diverse collection of flowering trees, shrubs and vines. Green lawns and multi-colored perennial borders surrounded wooden decks and outdoor living areas. Cedar Adirondack chairs looked out on springtime beds filled with daffodils and the tall yellow tulip called Blushing Beauty, with its faint blush of pink highlights.

Today, I’m living near the city of Vancouver in a townhouse along Officers Row. My comparatively small space consists of a patio, a copper birdbath, a comfortable set of outdoor furniture and an assortment of potted plants including one Japanese maple, two flowering abelias and an assortment of dwarf conifers. It’s a pleasant space and easy to maintain. Most of my current gardening efforts are focused on the interpretive garden at the entrance to the Fort Vancouver National Heritage site.

Three keys to a successful garden are planning, preparation and maintenance. In addition, a successful gardener, which is to say, someone pleasantly satisfied with their own garden, will instill the garden with a hint of personal style. Your garden is your creative palette, and spring is the gardener’s chance to put his or her best face forward. I’ve seen it done to perfection in the Archers’ thoughtful, comfortably friendly garden in the heart of a Vancouver neighborhood and also in Vanessa Nagle’s well-planned, design-savvy garden showcasing the latest collectable plants on the market.

To a gardener, spring is the introduction of the gardening year. We’ve had all winter to think about the approaching season, and hopefully, we’ve been dreaming up plans. Most gardeners come into spring with an idea of changing their image, finally putting together the perfect garden. And so, the stakes are high from the beginning. If every time you look into the garden, you see areas that you wish were different, it is time to make some changes. Designate high-priority issues such as addressing privacy or designing a garden space with children in mind.

But what if we begin the season by taking an inventory of our garden’s strengths, and deciding what it is we need to enhance, rather than replace. Instead of tearing out that overgrown rhododendron, this may be the year to prune it well, and plant a simple, trustworthy ground cover like the variegated pachysandra at its feet. When winter rolls around and all the perennials have settled beneath the earth’s surface, you will be thankful for planning a season ahead.

In my old garden, several of the most common plants of the Northwest carried me through the winter season. The frosty white and pale lavender-pink blooms of the Mediterranean heather grace the garden with color throughout the coldest months of the year. Filling the space to the side of the entry courtyard are the bright red berries of the weed-smothering groundcover, Cotoneaster horizontalis. These are all easy, faithful plantings that we don’t hear enough about for one reason only: They are easy to grow and common to the Northwest landscape.

When we tell someone about our gardens, we paint a visual image. When we invite someone into our gardens, we share a part of our lives. In the coming weeks, the Candy Tuft will begin to fill out and cover its rounded form with a baby blanket of pure white flowers, spilling out of rocky crevices and draping over low rock walls. The red robin will return to our gardens, hopping across a lawn that needs to be mowed. In my mind I can still hear the croak, croak, croaking return of frogs to the Burkharts’ pond in the Hockinson hills. These are the faces and voices that I gladly welcome back to the garden each and every year.

Robb Rosser is a WSU-certified master gardener.