I am butting my head against the one-body problem as well. I have a bigger garden than you and I find myself sometimes wishing for a smaller one. When you have less space it forces you to make choices that a larger space allows you to avoid--for a while. Making a "no new garden beds" rule I suppose is progress. Somehow I can't face the "which garden bed should I get rid of" decision. Not yet. But I'm working on upgrading my fitness regimen.
LIke books, our lives are made up of chapters. I used to be more than willing to do all the work necessary for my garden to merit its inclusion in a garden tour, to inspire some and at least not disappoint others.Its an unbelievable and very real amount of work. Gardening on a humbler scale or simply for my own pleasure is much kinder in some ways, but even that approach necessarily morphs and reshapes over time. Other chapters call out to be lived and written, asking to be invested in and explored, other interests that might lead one out of town during some of those most formative and demanding garden times of the year. And so we bow our heads and let some things fall to the side. Some plants suffer, others take unfair advantage. Groupings fall out of balance. Something gives, as it must. We mourn what was and no longer quite 'is.' We make our uneasy peace with not being able to do it all.
Thank you for exploring this phenomenon so thoughtfully and accessibly, Joseph.
Nice to bump into you over here in this neighborhood where so many Facebookers seem loath to wander...
At age 74 I cannot conceive of “not gardening”. I’ve been gardening since I was a kid, learning from my dad. And yes during my self-employed working days, Gardening time was much more limited but still was an essential part of life. Since retiring I’ve become a full- time gardener transforming the established 1/4 acre PNW garden into my own while creating a food forest and incorporating more native & low maintenance plants so I can keep gardening the rest of my days. I too find great joy in community volunteering in our local food bank garden Two mornings a week. It’s been a wonderful social outlet working with like-minded people who have become great friends. Looking back on life past - I only regret I didn’t spend more time gardening and less time working. Happy Gardening!
Joseph, excellent thought provoking introspective post, thank you. The last 6 years I have spent 2-3 days a week volunteering at a local Arboretum (has about 18 themed gardens), have a photo of a well known garden visitor and friend from Colorado (PK), he and I standing in front of a new Hesperaloe Rock Garden Feature that I constructed late summer 2024. I'm in process of moving as much choice plant materials as possible from my garden to the arboretum.
Oh, how I identify with your lament! I am 75, and had to close my small orchid greenhouse last year when hauling mix and pots around became too much. Heartbreaking, but it wasn’t fair to let the plants suffer. With summer help in the form of a mow, blow and go guy, and a very part-time assist from a delightful young person who knows a rose bush from a dandelion, I manage my smallish Pacific Northwest yard. Here, in the ground zero of gardening delight, I totter on, determined not to let the vagaries of a checkered medical history force me to retire my weed-whacker. Fortunately, my walker seat aligns with the raised flower beds along my sloped yard. I gleefully wield my long-handled fork, vanquishing thistles and spurge with relish, and only occasionally getting my wheels stuck in the mud. But that’s a minor nuisance compared to the joy of having passers-by stop for Kodak moments, request cuttings and even seek advice. Long may I roll!
Beautifully said! As I retired last year, these thoughts really resonate with me. My little quarter-acre offers a large enough space and plenty of projects to keep me busy and happy. And I am simplifying the plantings, so I can keep tending them as long as possible.
"When Nichols wanted to grow a bunch of plants from seed, he handed the seeds to his gardener." Hahahaha! Your article is so so so great. I also fell down the rabbit hole of Beverly Nichols (who is very funny and a great writer despite being so annoyingly privileged) and, in my case, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Monk House Garden. And then I, too, started to get very cranky, realizing that I was not ever going to be able to achieve that level of maintenance. Pulling weeds in my backyard alone does sometimes feel so pointless. It's just me and the squirrels. And they don't seem offended by crabgrass. Yours is the first gardening article I've read that addresses this one-body problem (and the loneliness of the solitary gardener) head-on and finds an elegant, ethical, feel-good solution. Anyway, so excited to have stumbled upon your writing. Can't wait to read more.
We are fortunate enough to be able to afford a gardener one day a week during the growing seasons. Mostly by virtue of opening the garden to the public and to tours. So I am aware that that limits my problems.
But I do know that gardeners are constantly told to do things which just make their lives harder and that continuing to garden could be more possible if we weren't all told to garden like the hired gardeners you refer to. They had to find ways to occupy themselves all the time they were hired.
I recently read a piece on here telling people to clean and oil their tools, for example. Which you don't need to do with stainless steel.
How do we solve this one?
And, of course, the real gardening nightmare is growing veg. Giving that up would help a lot of people.
There are days I feel like a slave to my garden, which has numerous perennial beds along with 1000 square feet of vegetable garden spread across a couple of acres, plus three acres of woodland that benefits from a little maintenance each winter. I'm too cheap to hire help, so I put in the hours of labor so we can enjoy the tapestry of foliage and blooms, as well as healthy and tasty eating (which is the priority when coming up against the limits of time and energy). What's been lost is spending more time in the woods and the mountains, which is also important to my soul.
I keep telling my husband that I want a nice year-round greenhouse for my oldster gardening years. Some place to putter, many things at a level where I won't have to bend over as much and an area where I can grow some of the things I now haul in and out every spring and autumn, but without having to move them (no more up and down our very steep stairs!). I love the idea of volunteering somewhere to get the gardening "juices" flowing and I wish we had a conservatory here in Portland (maybe someday if the Portland Botanic Gardens becomes reality).
I love your “one-body problem” title and I admire your solution. I also have admired the Tom Sawyer approach I have occasionally encountered. For example, it made me laugh to read about a woman in this area that offered a fall class on putting your garden to bed for the winter… which she taught in her garden so she could offer plenty of hands-on experience. My husband used to joke about trying to adopt a few hard-working teenagers, but that’s probably an oxymoron and anyway I guess there are laws about that sort of thing. We probably will have to move to get away from my large garden problem, though I can’t imagine leaving it.
This resonates. We have an 11 acre property. The way I generally do things is to overdo them. So I created a huge garden with perennial beds and borders, a cutting garden, a veggie garden, various borders, plus annuals in pots on the porch. It exhausts and overwhelms me. Especially since our growing season is crammed into about 4 months. I complain constantly, to the point where my husband asks me to please stfu. I’ve tried getting Amish girls to help me because I thought they would know plants. But when I left them alone for 45 minutes it looked like a patch of my perennial garden had been denuded of every shred of green. So beyond tears of existential despair, I am at a loss about what to do and sometimes fantasize about brush hogging the whole thing. Looking forward to a new season!!
I am butting my head against the one-body problem as well. I have a bigger garden than you and I find myself sometimes wishing for a smaller one. When you have less space it forces you to make choices that a larger space allows you to avoid--for a while. Making a "no new garden beds" rule I suppose is progress. Somehow I can't face the "which garden bed should I get rid of" decision. Not yet. But I'm working on upgrading my fitness regimen.
LIke books, our lives are made up of chapters. I used to be more than willing to do all the work necessary for my garden to merit its inclusion in a garden tour, to inspire some and at least not disappoint others.Its an unbelievable and very real amount of work. Gardening on a humbler scale or simply for my own pleasure is much kinder in some ways, but even that approach necessarily morphs and reshapes over time. Other chapters call out to be lived and written, asking to be invested in and explored, other interests that might lead one out of town during some of those most formative and demanding garden times of the year. And so we bow our heads and let some things fall to the side. Some plants suffer, others take unfair advantage. Groupings fall out of balance. Something gives, as it must. We mourn what was and no longer quite 'is.' We make our uneasy peace with not being able to do it all.
Thank you for exploring this phenomenon so thoughtfully and accessibly, Joseph.
Nice to bump into you over here in this neighborhood where so many Facebookers seem loath to wander...
At age 74 I cannot conceive of “not gardening”. I’ve been gardening since I was a kid, learning from my dad. And yes during my self-employed working days, Gardening time was much more limited but still was an essential part of life. Since retiring I’ve become a full- time gardener transforming the established 1/4 acre PNW garden into my own while creating a food forest and incorporating more native & low maintenance plants so I can keep gardening the rest of my days. I too find great joy in community volunteering in our local food bank garden Two mornings a week. It’s been a wonderful social outlet working with like-minded people who have become great friends. Looking back on life past - I only regret I didn’t spend more time gardening and less time working. Happy Gardening!
Joseph, excellent thought provoking introspective post, thank you. The last 6 years I have spent 2-3 days a week volunteering at a local Arboretum (has about 18 themed gardens), have a photo of a well known garden visitor and friend from Colorado (PK), he and I standing in front of a new Hesperaloe Rock Garden Feature that I constructed late summer 2024. I'm in process of moving as much choice plant materials as possible from my garden to the arboretum.
Hello. May I ask were the arboretum is? I would love to visit it. I know who PK is from DBG!
Oh, how I identify with your lament! I am 75, and had to close my small orchid greenhouse last year when hauling mix and pots around became too much. Heartbreaking, but it wasn’t fair to let the plants suffer. With summer help in the form of a mow, blow and go guy, and a very part-time assist from a delightful young person who knows a rose bush from a dandelion, I manage my smallish Pacific Northwest yard. Here, in the ground zero of gardening delight, I totter on, determined not to let the vagaries of a checkered medical history force me to retire my weed-whacker. Fortunately, my walker seat aligns with the raised flower beds along my sloped yard. I gleefully wield my long-handled fork, vanquishing thistles and spurge with relish, and only occasionally getting my wheels stuck in the mud. But that’s a minor nuisance compared to the joy of having passers-by stop for Kodak moments, request cuttings and even seek advice. Long may I roll!
Beautifully said! As I retired last year, these thoughts really resonate with me. My little quarter-acre offers a large enough space and plenty of projects to keep me busy and happy. And I am simplifying the plantings, so I can keep tending them as long as possible.
"When Nichols wanted to grow a bunch of plants from seed, he handed the seeds to his gardener." Hahahaha! Your article is so so so great. I also fell down the rabbit hole of Beverly Nichols (who is very funny and a great writer despite being so annoyingly privileged) and, in my case, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Monk House Garden. And then I, too, started to get very cranky, realizing that I was not ever going to be able to achieve that level of maintenance. Pulling weeds in my backyard alone does sometimes feel so pointless. It's just me and the squirrels. And they don't seem offended by crabgrass. Yours is the first gardening article I've read that addresses this one-body problem (and the loneliness of the solitary gardener) head-on and finds an elegant, ethical, feel-good solution. Anyway, so excited to have stumbled upon your writing. Can't wait to read more.
Great article and like-minded logic. Volunteer & enjoy, peoples!
I really appreciate this. As a person who wanted a big garden, got a big garden and usually has no time for a big garden- I can relate.
Hi Joseph.
We are fortunate enough to be able to afford a gardener one day a week during the growing seasons. Mostly by virtue of opening the garden to the public and to tours. So I am aware that that limits my problems.
But I do know that gardeners are constantly told to do things which just make their lives harder and that continuing to garden could be more possible if we weren't all told to garden like the hired gardeners you refer to. They had to find ways to occupy themselves all the time they were hired.
I recently read a piece on here telling people to clean and oil their tools, for example. Which you don't need to do with stainless steel.
How do we solve this one?
And, of course, the real gardening nightmare is growing veg. Giving that up would help a lot of people.
There are days I feel like a slave to my garden, which has numerous perennial beds along with 1000 square feet of vegetable garden spread across a couple of acres, plus three acres of woodland that benefits from a little maintenance each winter. I'm too cheap to hire help, so I put in the hours of labor so we can enjoy the tapestry of foliage and blooms, as well as healthy and tasty eating (which is the priority when coming up against the limits of time and energy). What's been lost is spending more time in the woods and the mountains, which is also important to my soul.
I keep telling my husband that I want a nice year-round greenhouse for my oldster gardening years. Some place to putter, many things at a level where I won't have to bend over as much and an area where I can grow some of the things I now haul in and out every spring and autumn, but without having to move them (no more up and down our very steep stairs!). I love the idea of volunteering somewhere to get the gardening "juices" flowing and I wish we had a conservatory here in Portland (maybe someday if the Portland Botanic Gardens becomes reality).
I love your “one-body problem” title and I admire your solution. I also have admired the Tom Sawyer approach I have occasionally encountered. For example, it made me laugh to read about a woman in this area that offered a fall class on putting your garden to bed for the winter… which she taught in her garden so she could offer plenty of hands-on experience. My husband used to joke about trying to adopt a few hard-working teenagers, but that’s probably an oxymoron and anyway I guess there are laws about that sort of thing. We probably will have to move to get away from my large garden problem, though I can’t imagine leaving it.
I feel this in my 68-year old knees. And back. And fingers. You are really on to something here, I love your idea of gardening with others.
Also, THOSE CLIVIA, woah! I wish they were more easily found. They would be a lot more popular, I think. I love mine.
Just need one of Hans’s seedling yellows now ha ha
Lovely! @Sally Morgan another one for your collection of front gardens x
This resonates. We have an 11 acre property. The way I generally do things is to overdo them. So I created a huge garden with perennial beds and borders, a cutting garden, a veggie garden, various borders, plus annuals in pots on the porch. It exhausts and overwhelms me. Especially since our growing season is crammed into about 4 months. I complain constantly, to the point where my husband asks me to please stfu. I’ve tried getting Amish girls to help me because I thought they would know plants. But when I left them alone for 45 minutes it looked like a patch of my perennial garden had been denuded of every shred of green. So beyond tears of existential despair, I am at a loss about what to do and sometimes fantasize about brush hogging the whole thing. Looking forward to a new season!!