A Grower Perspective

I stopped in the Creswell Café yesterday afternoon for a treat of fruit salad.  Paul the owner popped in and we talked about how well his trees, from Pleasant Hill Nursery, were doing.  We talked quite a bit before he choose his six trees, discussing how to plant them, where they were to go and what varieties would be best for the site.  He came here, I went there, Dave delivered the trees and showed him how to remove them from the big pots. 

The point here is that there was a lot of careful conversation and consideration about how to do the best job possible. Paul wasn’t sure he could do it himself, the soil was difficult to dig, the holes had to be big enough and watering system had to be devised.  In the end he did the work himself, sweat a lot and has keep the trees so happy that they are putting on a bit of new growth.  From inside the café the red of the ‘Bloodgood’ maple picks up the paint color of the wall.  One can see that in a short time the shade desired from the ‘Merrill’ magnolias and the Cladrastis tree will be there.  All in all, the entire project worked out very well. With a bit of help from us, Paul made his own garden. One of my mottos is “the best garden is the one you do yourself”.  Why?  Because you are totally invested in it; you are not going to let your plants dry out after all that effort, you are going to care for your babies. Sometimes not knowing the ‘right’ way to do something allows for a lot of creativity and new ‘right’ ways to do things, like the neighbor who was eating (and sharing) string beans very early in the season because they didn’t know to plant them later.  Ask questions, read books, look around and then tend to your garden in your own creative way.  It will be the best.