I’ve always been great at dreaming up and starting new garden projects. But I haven’t been as successful finishing them. I work in fits and starts. Take the aviary above, for example. I started it this spring; it’s still not done. And to make matters worse, at least in the short term, I always have several projects in the works at any given time. This lends my garden a certain element of–let’s be honest–chaos. At best. But the multi-tasking suits my short attention span: I can work on whatever project calls to me on any given day. Or not. Interruptions are never a problem, After all, the whole point, ultimately, is enjoyment. So why obsess? My garden ADHD is not a bad thing, and thankfully my wife is very tolerant of my laissez-faire methodology. But truth time approaches. I usually host a Garden Conservancy Open Day tour in mid-September, so this is when panic starts setting in. How many projects will actually get done by the big day. And how much of a mess will I have to disguise? And can I whip the rest of the place into the finely manicured showcase (Hah!) it usually is by the appointed date?
Let’s count the ways. My newest project is the aviary, bascially an oversized bird cage where my son houses, during the summer months, some of his birds. Doves, finches, button quail and parakeets call it home, at least they do since the main construction was completed by his Aug. 16 birthday. Now I’ve never been good at estimating how long a project will take, but this has been a whopper. Aside from construction details–I’d never built a octagonal structure before and they are tricky–there’s all the landscaping I didn’t anticipate. How could I have forgotten the most fun part? I put in a boardwalk to provide easy access to the cage door, retooled and edged in stone the lines of the bed the aviary rises from, and still need to replant the whole area, as well as add ornamental trim and a touch of paint to the aviary itself. But, it’s looking good, and having completed about 85% of the job, completion is in sight. Bonus: The aviary has made a much more intriguing garden element than I’d even hoped, and in a part of the yard that needs help.
Project number two is my front yard, which I’ve written about in a couple posts. I went at it hammer and tong for a while, but the foundation still needs planting. It is to be primarily boxwood, which I’ll prune into cloudlike shapes. I didn’t want to spend a lot for plants and put them in until the heat of summer is past (at least that was my rationale for turning my attention to the aviary). Now that time has come, hopefully I’ll find some good, reasonably priced specimens and pop them in so it at least looks mostly finished, but there are also the planting boxes I want to make to flank the front door (which also needs some paint and TLC), and a few other elements, so this project, it seems, may look finished even though it won’t be complete. Bonus: the aesthetic details of this project had a lot of skeptics, who have been wholely won over.
The last project is the biggest and most challenging–our new pond. Last year it was a hole in the ground big enough to appear on Google Earth. I’m not kidding, I saw it there. This year we completed the hole, smoothed the bottom of many thousands of rocks both large and small, put down a thick layer of scrounged old carpets for underlayment, and spread our one piece 50 x 75 foot liner–all 1300 pounds of it. We positioned some of the many large stones which will come into play, including our steeping stone bridge. At the same time, we’re cleaning up the edge and working on a smaller pond which will cascade into the larger one. Whew! And did I mention we, which is to say mostly me, are also redoing the front yard and building an aviary? There’s no way on earth that pond is going to be done.
But there’s a silver lining to this particular cloud. I’ve learned from past tours that people actually love to see gardens “in the works”, ones with projects underway. Many visitors have said they feel more at home in a garden in the midst of flux and change more than they do in one which is primped and blow-dried to a fare-thee-well. Seeing things in process, they say, makes it all seem more doable. Which is a good thing for me, and for my garden ADHD.
Steve Silk
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