Gardening Adventures – Marianne’s Garden Stories

At the age of 67, Marianne moved from an apartment complex back to a house with a garden. She missed having a garden where she could sit, garden, and enjoy flowers, plants, and little creatures. She fell for it all over again… Now she writes about her little garden with enthusiasm and passion, as only she can. “I’m just winging it,” she often writes. But in the meantime, she’s created a truly beautiful garden—one that’s only 43 square meters!

Fallen for it

I fell for it.
I'll be right there.

As an elderly lady, I lived on the third floor with a view of the battlements of the old city wall. With a view of my garden in the garden at the foot of the apartment complex for people with stiff joints.

I had to create that garden because my eyes couldn't stand the gray of the bare patch of ground below me. I bought a trowel, a rake, and a bucket, and got to work in the garden.

What I missed.
A door I can step through in the spring to look for the tips of the hostas. To see if there’s still life in the woody ends of the maple branches. To watch the birds scurry about in search of the seeds of the cosmos and marigolds. I missed having a garden I could look into, where the greenery looks down on me.

I'm no delicate lady with clean hands; I want to walk around on the ground floor in my clogs.
Somewhere in the universe, my wish was heard and understood.

I brought the shovel, the bucket, the wooden contraptions, my books, and my bed to the house with a roof, a staircase, and a front and back yard.

I'm going to start all over again. Bags of soil. Digging holes. Turning the soil. Lifting tiles.

“She fell for it again,” my sixty-seven-year-old joints sigh.
I fell for it again.

(February, first year)

You're free to dream

The hellebore has been joined by unsightly little clumps of this and that, which are meant to grow into something big and beautiful. Shyly, it turns its flowers away, afraid of the unknown. In the evening, I sit with it to cheer it up.

“Look how beautiful it’s becoming. The little things will keep you company—you’re no longer alone.”
I lean back and look at the result of my "I'll just wing it" work.

The maple trees are in full color, with red, orange, and green. I'm worried about the summer heat because the delicate leaves don't seem to like the heat.
I dream of pergolas that provide shade—even for my sun-allergic skin.
You're free to dream, but first, the vacation pay.

There may be freezing and thawing. The hydrangeas’ early-blooming leaves don’t like the freezing. They can start over, but “starting over” is the motto of this garden.
The forsythia, which was pruned quite severely, is also starting over; it’s tentatively showing new buds. I’ll have to take its vigorous growth into account, so I’m giving it plenty of space.

The cuttings from the old garden are thriving in the new soil. The lysimachia—which I’ll come to curse in three years—is sprouting from the ground, and the geranium is the first to show its buds in the new garden.
“Isn’t that right?” calls out the hellebore in the background. “I was here first!”

The old garden—the garden within the garden—lies there, looking sadly abandoned and parched. None of my old neighbors are bringing it back to life. I take the last maple tree that fits in the car and promise it that I’ll pamper it for the first few weeks. In gratitude, it displays its leaves in a blazing yellow.

Water in the garden.

A small container is a start. The pond pump will have to wait until the garden center is COVID-free. I’ve forbidden myself from going to the store for non-essential knickknacks. But my eyes dream of wadis and little marshes and frogs and salamanders; they dream of extra square meters where that dream can come true.

I'm free to dream—I don't even have to leave the house to do it.

(April, first year)

What I Found

I said yes to the house because of the yard.
That's not true.
I also said yes to the house just for the sake of having a house. It fits me like an old coat.
The garden is the icing on the cake. Even though it's only forty square meters.

What I found: The Fat Lady, a conifer three meters wide and three meters tall. A stubborn, headstrong forsythia turned its nose up at the Fat Lady and draped its branches three meters across the patio.

A hibiscus, many years old and brutally cut down.
The single-flowered hellebore.
And I'm not talking about the five-meter-tall lilac sapling. The trunk of the original plant serves as a support for the birdbath.

What does a person do with a new garden in March? She cuts the conifer to pieces and uses the trunk as a totem pole. She prunes the forsythia a little too eagerly and has long conversations with the hellebore. But above all: day in and day out, with her glasses perched on the tip of her nose, she searches for new plants.
“I see a little green dot,” I text my friend happily. “No, two—no, five—come take a look, there must be a hundred of them.”

I'm doing a little dance around the hellebore. My garden is going to give me some free plants. My friend isn't coming over because of the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Describe them,” she calls out. “Are they hostas?”
I do like hostas. Along with maples, they're one of my favorite plants.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “They’re just little things.”
A lot of little things.
Like stiff little soldiers on Red Square, they stand firmly in formation along the edge of the flowerbed.
“Lily of the valley,” says an expert.
Right. So I have those. Lots of them. Google tells me they're shade-loving plants. So why are they marching in rows of three like little dots toward the sun?

A decision needs to be made. I’d still like to call the shots a little bit in this garden. They can stay in the shade along the hedge—as many as they want. But I have other plans for the edge of the border. I’m not sure what they are yet. Number three on my list of favorites is the red-orange heucheria.
Off to the garden center.

(May, first year)

Patience

“Patience,” my mother would say when I asked for the twentieth time if we were there yet. When I asked in the morning, afternoon, and evening how many more nights until my birthday.

It's good to have it. Patience.
I have it for a few things. I make quilts that take me half a year to finish. No problem. I’m patiently teaching the dog to be less afraid. And of course, I have a lot of patience with my headstrong part-time sweetheart.
I need to learn how to be patient—the kind of patience you need in the garden.

Then I'll just wait patiently until the climbing plants have taken over the pergola. Until the marigolds I planted have decided to start growing.
Then I don't care how long it takes for the pond substrate to settle to the bottom. This is really testing my patience.

So then. How long will it take for my little pond to find the right balance? How long will it take before the sun and the oxygenating plants have decided who wins? If the sun wins, I’ll end up with a murky pond; if the oxygenating plants win, my patience will be rewarded.
It's not easy to be patient when it comes to gardening.

Can I handle letting the garden grow wild in its own way? Or will I keep biking back and forth to the garden center for even more cute little plants?
“The garden is only four months old,” my rational mind tells me.
“That could be,” says the plant addict. “I still see bare spots here, there, and there.”
A precarious balance: reason and addiction.

But!! I have two impatient companions. The fat toad and the skinny toad are hopping in and out of the pond while I’m busy with a little stream here and a little stream there.
“Get out of the way!” I yell as my tree-stump waterway threatens to crush the Fat One. Those animals have no patience.
And I haven't even mentioned my perfectionism yet.

(June, first year)

I'm just winging it

In the early morning sun, the solitary hellebore turns its oldest flower toward the hydrangea standing behind it. This moment in the quiet morning is the only time the shy little plant dares to open its mouth. The rest of the day, it is drowned out by the clamour of the heuchera and geranium jostling for space.

“It’s cozy, isn’t it, neighbor?” says the modest little plant. “May I ask you something?”
“Ask away,” grumbles the hydrangea, which hasn’t let the socks push it aside in a long time.
“You are beautiful and sturdy, and your bracts are a gorgeous purple-lilac color. My flowers pale in comparison. But I fear your vigor, which will cause your flowers to quickly overwhelm mine.”
“Stand up for yourself, little hellebore,” I call out from my armchair in the doorway. “Your colors complement each other beautifully, and that gives me the joy I’m looking for. The red of your geum neighbor really ties it all together.”

“Fear not,” growls the left-hand flower of the hydrangea. “We grow toward the light and will leave plenty of room for your modest little flowers. After all, you were here first, weren’t you?”
“And me,” chirps the forsythia across the street. “Even though Miss Impatience nearly killed me, I didn’t let it get me down. I’m back.”

I recline in my easy chair and gaze contentedly at my “I’m-just-winging-it” garden. I wish I could say I’d chosen the color of the hydrangea to shine behind the hellebore and next to the geum. I wish I could say that I knew the yellow of the Lysimachia would add an exciting touch there. Then you readers would be rolling out of your chairs in admiration of my meticulously planned postage-stamp garden.

Unfortunately, I have to disappoint any reader who thinks they can learn something from me. I’m just winging it. Take four different maples and a few clumps of vague green stuff from the old garden, a three-meter-tall, lopsided forsythia, and a hellebore with a single flower, plant a few things that look nice in the picture, try to remember where you sowed your marigolds and cosmos so you don’t trample them, jumble everything up in your head—and you’ll get my garden. I have nothing to say about successive blooming periods, nothing about how Piet Oudolf-esque I’ve draped the grasses, nothing I could be interviewed about in a gardening magazine. I follow the garden; the garden doesn’t follow me. Maybe in three years, when I know how hot the sun gets in the summer and where the shade falls in the fall. Maybe when I’ve had to transplant four plants because they were too hot, too dry, or too dark.
We'll see about that.

But there's one thing I'm in charge of: the pond. It needs to be bigger.

(June, first year)

Poor garden

Then the maple had to make way for the tree. The heavenly bamboo had to make way for the maple.
Then the pond had to be enlarged, and the little maple tree had to make way for water—for stones from Brittany and the Dordogne, from Groesbeek, and from the IJssel.

Poor garden. Imagine being stuck with a gardener who just does whatever she wants.
Then I started digging and turning the soil and adding good soil, and of course I ended up with six wheelbarrows full of soil left over.

Luckily, I have a front yard that I haven’t written about yet, and I was able to use the soil in the spot where the heather used to be—which I don’t care for one bit. On the other side of the front yard is my neighbor’s water trough, and she’s getting my pond; together, we’re picking up stones we found on Marktplaats. Now I have stones from Italy and Croatia—and really beautiful ones at that—because the man who found them was a stone connoisseur. He sawed them in half to reveal their hidden beauty.
But that's beside the point.

Poor garden. Just when everything has settled in, grown, and bloomed, things have to change again.
I have too much sun in the garden—that's why. I love ferns, hostas, and moss on old planters, but I'll just have to make do with the sun. And with scorched maple trees.

Every cloud has a silver lining. With the arrival of the tree, the maple trees are now in the shade—I hope—and will once again display their fiery red and bright yellow splendor in the spring.
I hope so.
But the cosmos have stayed put and aren't bothered by fall.

(October, first year)

Becoming Wise

"Kleine Tuinen" is a Facebook page full of savvy gardeners, both men and women. When we small-garden owners don't know what to do with our little patch of land, one helpful tip follows another.

Where is the sun, and where is the shade? What type of soil do you have in your garden? Where do you want to sit, lie down, or eat in your garden? Do you want to grow plants vertically, or do you want to use pots?
Then comes the all-encompassing advice: Make a plan.
I didn't do that.

Last year, I moved into the little house that fits me like an old coat. I found a barren garden both in front and in back. A single hellebore with one flower welcomed me—the gardener with a thousand wishes.
I want cut flowers and flowers that attract insects.
I want perennials with attractive foliage.
I want shrubs that are cheerful in the spring and turn yellow and red as winter approaches.
I want a grape to snack on and some honeysuckle to smell.
I want one tree for shade and one for the view.
I want a pond that reflects the clouds, with fish in it that come to beg for food.
I want a garden that shelters me, embraces me, and brings me joy.
Do you understand?

Let's do this in 43 square meters. With a modest budget and limited physical strength. In a garden that had been wisely tiled.

If only I'd had a plan. Or ten thousand euros.
Still, though.

The pond is there. I dug it myself. The fish have survived the winter. The maple trees from the old garden are thriving. Two trees are shedding their blossoms for the first time—into the pond—but who cares? The hellebore has six flowers. The space to sit, lie down, and eat is getting smaller and smaller. So I’ll just have to eat with my plate on my lap.

This gardener, who doesn't follow a plan, is bursting with ideas all year round. Take out one more tile here, add a little shrub there, and when her vacation pay comes in, she'll pick up some cheerful little things.
Will this "I just do whatever I feel like" gardener ever come to her senses?

(April, second year)

We’ve posted a selection from Marianne’s gardening story series “Erin getuind” here. Check out all the “Erin getuind” posts in our Facebook group.