How I Wrote My New Book, "Garden Disruptors," 5
I woke up in total darkness, in a slight panic. I dreamt I was sketching in the Seattle garden but had lost my pad and pastels. A bit confused in this dark room, I talked to myself,
“Where am I? Seattle?”
“No, that was decades ago.”
“Ok, now I’m awake. I slept in my friend’s Jim pool house, right by the Carolina marsh.”
The night before, we sat on his deck by a fire, talking about the old days when we worked together building a huge public garden. But wine, fire, and old friends led the conversation from book needs and professional goals into hazy, heartfelt memories. And questions that didn’t have clear answers. He’d asked a question that should have had a simple answer but it took me aback. I floundered. I’m sure his question led to my dream and took me from a Carolina winter night back to my other life in clear and brisk Seattle.
My housemate there grew a glorious perennial garden. Since it was designed to be full of flowers from April through October, my memories of it are all bright and sunshiny.
You saw it all from the back stoop. Three parallel terraces rose up a slope steep enough that you couldn’t see the top. Steps cut through the center. It sounds grand, but this was a rustic, city-lot version of a Lutyens-style English estate.
The first terrace, the show stopper, maybe reached 30 feet wide but only 10 feet deep. One end was my favorite spot, a bench against a wall covered with a vine. I’d never seen a species Mandivilla laxa before. Slim, elegant flowers with intoxicating fragrances turned into long, hard green beans. Each was actually two pods fused on both ends but held apart in the middle. I could sit on the bench and stretch my neck and let the pods scratch my scalp for a comforting, reassuring childhood feeling.
A rocky walk to that garden bench grew alpine-like plants; Lewissia, Hawkweed, and something else from childhood that shocked me. “Edelweiss is a plant?” I thought. Captain von Trapp sang his mournful song, strummed his guitar, and it was all about a flower? As a child, we’d watched The Sound of Music every year, but I never got that he was singing about a flower. These crevice plants were all new to me. They’d have melted in the humid, flood-prone Deep South I grew up in. This tiny rock walkway inspired me to join the Rock Garden Society.
Up four steps on the second level, taller sturdy perennials kept you from falling off the edge. This terrace was only six feet wide but held more fantasy plants. Fairy Fishing Wands, ‘Maiori Chief’ New Zealand Flax, and the unforgettable Verbasum undulatum with its roller-coaster leaves. This drag queen of a plant stood in the middle of the walkway, demanding respect for its outlandish charms.
The third level opened up again. The old concrete here had one day been a public road. When the city did away with the old system of back alleys, it became the garden work zone. At one end, we kept sick or newly potted up plants. We called it the plant ghetto. Compost, bags of soil, and even tools could be hidden up here. It’s a terrible idea for wooden-handled tools, but we stored them lying down on the ground.
I landed here via a room-for-rent ad. Little did I know I’d moved in with one of Seattle’s famed gardeners. He had a book and, at one time, did lectures and the plant society circuit. But he’d pulled back. People at my Arboreum job thought his elusiveness was a sort of snobbery. Not even close. This lanky Wisconsin farm boy was a self-made, people-loving cultured raconteur. A generation of men like him, just a few years older than me, left mean-dirt farms, sought beauty, redefined love, and demanded respect. They'd made a world that was easier for young men like me. He asked me to move in.
He was fighting AIDS. But he was dying.
I brought energy, youth, and excitement. He made spaghetti and made me watch classic garden/queer movies. He loved to hear Momma’s southern accent on the message machine. He taught me all his rare plants and shared refined techniques as we gardened. I worried about his tools rotting up there, where he stored them laying on the ground. “Not a problem,” he said, “those tools will last a few years. I’ve only got a few months.”
We had a full year together.
Back in the dark pool house, I packed my things and put a halt to those memories. As I pulled my truck out of Jim’s garden, pre-dawn gray light cast marsh grasses in pastel colors. Though it wasn’t the point of our evening conversation, I told Jim about my life, friends, love, and the garden wonders of Seattle.
Jim knew my professional reasons for coming back to South Carolina all those years ago. After all, he’d hired me to build a public garden here. But the question that stumped me wasn’t from a boss. It was from the curiosity and concern of a friend. He said, “I know what you came back to do. I know the job pulled you back. But how could you have left that life you’d loved in Seattle?”
This is an overwhelmingly wonderful description.
Beautiful memories! I could have read on for hours. I always love your stories. I look forward to the book.