There comes a time, usually with the start of the new year, when a certain madness settles over a gardener, rather like the disorientation of a dense early morning fog, the blinding downpour of a sudden and violent thunderstorm, or the sky turned brown with dust. The drifts of spring bulbs, the colorful sweep of annuals, the mixed perennial border, and the rose garden, all waiting to emerge from winter’s chill, are not enough to satisfy the soul. Coincidentally or not, depending on the gardener’s perception of how devious is the mind of the commercial nurseryman, garden catalogs begin to fill the mailbox, beguiling the housebound gardener with photos and descriptions of the newest and best from the world of horticulture. And, curled up in an easy chair, a cup of hot cocoa in hand, who can resist the idea of being the envy of one’s friends by having the first fully hardy orange tree, or northern cranberry bush, or swamp azalea in West Texas?
Once the chocolate high has worn off, the time comes for serious planning, beginning with the stacks of catalogs. From years of experience I know I will not have oranges or cranberries or swamp azaleas in my garden, nor any plant that requires uniformly moist, acid soil, wants high humidity, cannot tolerate wind, grows only on sandy dunes, or thrives in USDA cold hardiness zones that don’t include Zone 7. It is amazing how this knowledge clears the mind and I can begin to go through the fattest catalogs, eliminating at least 40% of the plants based on these restrictions. Of those that are left, I will already have 25% growing in my garden, and since I am the kind of gardener who likes one of everything, one is usually enough. Another 15% will not be to my personal taste in color or form or shape or height, although I admit my taste changes from year to year, and nothing in this group is ever permanently ruled out. Then there are the five percent of plants that while I might covet, are too expensive for my Scotch Presbyterian nature. At this point I usually begin saying out loud “I am not cheap, I am thrifty”, a mantra I have repeated to friends on more than one occasion when they commented on my gardening outfits purchased from Goodwill at very good value. Next I make a list of all the plants I want to order, which catalog they are in and the price, and then I compare prices from catalog to catalog until I come up with my master list, which may include orders from three or four catalogs. I do try to decide which plants might be carried locally because I like to see a plant before I buy it, but every year I find it soothes the garden spirit if I try one or two plants which by all rights should not grow in our area, and are only available by mail order.
Now that I am down to a reasonable number of plants, I try to think where I can put them, which is not easy in January when much of the garden is dormant. If I can’t envision the space, I will still place my orders, asking for delivery after our average last freeze date in mid-April, when the garden has emerged, and when I can remove plants that I don’t like as well as I used to. Sometimes I put these plants in the alley, donate them to the Lubbock Memorial Arboretum to be planted there or added to their annual plant swap/sale, or share them with friends (this is the difference between being thrifty or stingy – stingy don’t share).
Once the new plants have arrived and been put to bed I am comforted by the knowledge that while we gardeners constantly humble ourselves before the forces of nature and know the pain of failure so often, even if it isn’t an orange or a cranberry or a swamp azalea, we deserve to have occasional bragging rights, and this will never happen unless we go outside the Zone, close our eyes to reality, take a leap of faith!