On being a beginning gardener (for the third time)

I knew the path of the sun across this little rectangle of land even before we moved here. It’s the same as the garden I’d been making in Florida for the two years prior — the FL and NY houses being oriented exactly the same way. What a nice little housewarming gift from the universe.

To start a new garden from scratch, even within the same zone, is in some ways to be a beginner again. You’ll need to learn the soil and the critters, the good and bad sight lines, where water collects and where the sun lands. But to know (instinctively) that you need to consider all of these things means you’ve done this before. As I said in the intro, this is my fourth time making a garden. It’s my third new climate, my first time having to think about winter. But what makes me feel like a beginner all over again — no matter how well I know how to plant a plant — is not knowing the plants. 

Climate No.1 : Northern California (Zone 9b)

My first foray into gardening was 20 years ago, in the backyard of a small house we were renting in the town of Napa. As compared to the more persistently cool Bay Area immediately to its south, Napa has hotter summers and colder winters, but it’s very much a temperate, Mediterranean-ish climate. I had no clue what I was doing — or rather, I knew only what I had been reading in magazines for ages, dreaming of someday when we might have a little dirt to play in. My experience extended only to a few potted plants on the occasional apartment balcony. In retrospect, the main thing I learned from that garden, through nonstop trial and error, was how to compose with plants. How to choose the right spot for a plant, believe what the tags said about eventual size, space things correctly. I bought and studied the iconic Sunset Western Garden Book — my first plant bible — pored over even more magazines. (There were so many good ones then!) Made both deliberate and impulse buys. Planted and moved things, a lot. And just generally had a blast playing around in a big sandbox that didn’t belong to me. (All the best plant finds, I kept in pots to move with us, like the blue agave pictured.) 

After I’d been at it for a while, our next-door neighbor one day peered over the fence from her deck at my beloved mishmash of Mediterranean and exotic plants — fanatically collected from big-box, local and legendary nurseries around the region — and said tentatively, “Have you thought about using any native plants?” Which was not a term I had even heard. So that garden was an education through and through.

For my second garden — still in 9b, just down the road — I got to start over, with all my hard-won knowledge at the ready. It was a monster of a project — months of spending every weekend on our knees pulling weeds and clearing brush, hauling and stacking rocks, grading, graveling, and then came the planting. But I went into the project feeling absolutely confident that I knew what I wanted to make and how to make it, and to this day it is one of my proudest accomplishments. I’ll likely show you more of it sometime.

A Decade Off

The home after that, still in the Bay Area, I had only a little rectangle of concrete on which to set a few pots; no dirt to dig in. (I learned to knit instead.) All my best plant treasures (along with my tools) were adopted by friends with gardens. And when we moved to Nashville several years later, I became acutely aware that learning to garden in CA is not only completely different, it’s basically cheating: It’s too easy to count. I was working around the clock in those years anyway, running a small business, and there was no time to learn the plants or how to garden in that climate, how to think about winter, so I just ... didn’t. 

Climate No.2 : East Coast of Florida (Zone 10b)

When we took a detour to Florida during Covid, and I was at home full-time, with another neglected back yard at my disposal, I dug in. I had gone into it thinking I’d be able to use all the tropical plants I’d admired that were so out of place in Northern CA, and that I wouldn’t have to prioritize drought tolerance like I had before — it would rain every other day, right? — but I quickly learned neither was true. Once again, I knew nothing. So I bought a copy of Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants (my second plant bible) and began to study. I read it cover to cover, flagged all the plants that suited my taste and our lot, found an excellent native plant nursery (plus a few “Florida-friendly” non-natives) and a guy who could help me with the heavy lifting, and got busy.

Even though I personally am not well suited to Zone 10b and had to be replanted elsewhere, I had a great time learning the plants and seeing what I could do with them. The great thing about gardening in Florida is you don’t have to wait long to see how you did! 

Climate No.3 : Hudson Valley, New York (Zone 6a)

Now here I am making a garden in the Hudson Valley, from literally nothing, with plants I mostly don’t know (and others I have long envied from the other side of the continent) plus winter to account for, and it feels very much like being a beginner all over again. But I am a person who loves being a beginner — the research and learning, and the newness of things. So I’m reading, talking to people, visiting nurseries and studying the plant tags. Trying to broaden the menu in my mind before I make too many decisions without knowing what else is out there waiting to be considered. 

Things grow slower here, so each choice feels more important to get right. And yes, it’s awkward to be showing you my barely-begun garden that won’t look like much for quite a while, but that’s ok. As far as I know, I’ve got plenty of time ... and a shiny new copy of The Northeast Native Plant Primer.* What better way to spend the coming winter than reading about plants and dreaming up plans?

*Plant bible number three, chosen at random — please let me know if you have thoughts on it or a better recommendation!

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