Garden Muse

When asked to write about my garden mentor or muse...I was a bit stumped at first. Of course, I have some advisors that I can turn to in a pinch but I didn't really grow up learning about how to care for plants or a garden.

This lady changed it all.

Her name is Alys Fowler and her brilliant show "The Edible Garden" had me captivated. Have you seen it??

This is one of 6 episodes. I devoured them all. Back to back. It really made me excited to get out and put my hands in the dirt.

Since then (Jan. or Feb. of this past year), I have been striving to create a garden space of my own. 

Alys sparked the fire but Pinterest has helped fill my imagination. In the past few months, I've trolled and trolled for lovely images of other folks gardens, courtyards and patios. 

It's funny, when you don't really have any gardening experience or any specific person to turn to...it's really hard to know where to start. For this, I turned to the awesome BBC series, "How to be a Gardener" with Alan Titchmarsh.

Now that I am having to re-invision my space (because of those pesky gophers), I'm leaning on Pinterest for ideas of how to create a beautiful space that will work for me, without being destined for ruin.

First of all, instead of mainly dirt, I will need to switch to mainly gravel and/or a bark mulch. Before I was planning much more of an English Garden feel.

I love how this is lush and mainly in raised beds. There is gravel covering all of the exposed areas. I also love the large decorative urns.

I am still determined to grow vines...so I will need to plant them in gopher baskets or pots.

On Pinterest? Follow me or my gardening board for more inspiration.

I also heavily rely on the blog-o-sphere for tutorials and advice. In the beginning of my research, I devoured back articles on You Grow Girl, Mr. Brown Thumb and Gardenista.

Apparently, it takes an online village to mentor & inspire a gardener. Without knowing any of them, they have meant more to me than they'll ever know.

This post was written in response to the prompt "Write about your garden mentor or muse", part of the Grow Write Guild on You Grow Girl.  It is the fourth prompt in the series.

A Rose-Certificate

It is quite a novel idea to get a kid a gift certificate to a heritage rose nursery.  Most kids probably wouldn't be very enthused.

I was the opposite. I absolutely loved it.

My Aunt Donna knew me well. Growing up, she was like a grandmother to me, since my actual grandmother (her and my dad's mom, Charlotte) had past away before I was born. Her and I shared many of the same passions and I was always fascinated by what she was up to.

I'm not exactly certain which birthday the rose-certificate was for but my guess would be that I was in the "tween" years of my life. I cherished the experience of going to The Antique Rose Emporium and picking out "the perfect bush".  

To this day, I am giddy anywhere that there is an overwhelming amount of visual stimuli; I linger for hours in fabric stores, nurseries, yarn shops and the like. It was no different that day. I probably made my parents stroll around for ages before deciding.

Do I remember the name or variety of the rose that I ended up choosing?  No.

What I do remember are the medium ballet pink blossoms that smelled incredibly fragrant but not saccharine sweet. The standard terra cotta pot that it was planted in--the joy of seeing it's first bloom each spring.

I will not claim any more ownership of this plant as I will of the cats that we adopted around the same time in my life. They all belong to my mother, because it is from her care and nurture that they have lived such happy lives. 

I don't have as good of a track record (for plants--my cat is a very spoiled and happy member of the family). I have an enormous interest and love for plants, but I lack the knowledge of how to properly care for them. And until recently, I haven't really cared to learn. Convinced that I had a "black thumb," I would actually just neglect the plants out of laziness and therefore they would die. **To my credit, the Texas heat did not help.**

It seems that fate has made me come back full circle and I now have a dozen or so rose bushes at our Pasadena, CA home that I must care for. They were not a choice that I made but entrusted to me since they have been around the property for many years. My gentle pruning and care of these bushes is what first re-sparked my interest and boosted my confidence in my ability to garden.  

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How serendipitous then, that my last conversation with my Aunt Donna before her passing early this year was mostly spent chatting about all of my roses.

This essay was written for the Grow Write Guild, from the prompt, Write about your first plant. The roses in the image above are the first blooms from my bushes this spring. Follow me on Instagram @baileyamon.