“a spare, insightful meditation on garden philosophy” ---Northerngardener.org
My grandmother used to tell me—on the plains of Kansas where I grew up—"You need to look far away, to the horizon. It's good for your eyes." Maybe she meant nothing more but that it was good for the eyes. But my grandmother was a sharp cookie who had known hard days and overcome them. I always took her words to mean more than simply 'good for your eyes'. I took them to mean, Look ahead, look back, look to ways of thinking, and doing, and being that are far beyond the way that you have seen them done. I took them to mean that there is far more to imagine, to do, and to understand in the great sweep of the horizon than you can find in your own small world.
Kansas, like northwest Minnesota, had a far horizon, not overly cluttered with hills and trees. Like northwest Minnesota, its horizon beckoned one toward far seeing and far thinking, and gave one a sense—not of isolation or clannishness—but of being a part of something bigger. Learning to watch that far horizon taught my mind to watch the other kinds of horizons, horizons of how to think, of looking back and looking ahead. A garden on the plains should not omit that far horizon. Consider ways to encourage far-seeing, a bench that overlooks an open field, a view of distant hills, or a focal point that draws the eye and mind outward.
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A variety of flowers can attract butterflies, but I always felt that no self-respecting butterfly garden should be without butterfly weed. Its bright orange color is a perfect balance for purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans. Butterfly weed is more than a stopping place for butterflies. It's a place for some of them to be born and grow up. What's more, the butterfly weed is native to the prairie where I grew up.
However, establishing butterfly weed in the heavy clay-rich soil of my butterfly garden proved difficult. I had to replant repeatedly when my plants wilted and died. Each time, I dug a deeper hole and transplanted more rich, sandy soil to provide better drainage. To no avail.
But, I had faith in my vision. It's good to have faith in your gardens and your gardening plan, otherwise it's too easy to give up when challenges arise. Eventually, I found a vendor for a clay-tolerant variety of butterfly weed, and, since then, it has done well.
However, efforts to overcome challenges with selected plantings have not always fared as well. I planted roses in a slightly shaded and rather dry spot south of the house and they did not thrive, despite a decade of faithful effort. Whatever vision you have for your perfect garden, you need to listen to the garden, and not cling to ideas that simply won't work for your climate, your soil, or your lighting. Faith in your garden vision is important. But belief in ideas that are demonstrably false is not the same thing as faith. The perfect garden, like God, is not something to be envisioned in your head and then found by force of will. The perfect garden, like God, is found through the humility to realize that your vision might be incomplete and in the willingness to seek better understandings even against the urge to cling to preexisting notions. The perfect garden is found only in the ongoing search, a work in progress, as is your own soul.
©2020 - Russell Colson