When I garden, I remember how much I don't know | Opinion

With any luck, spring 2024 will be less eventful than last year’s, when Canadian wildfires clouded the skies way down here in southeast Michigan, making the already long, gray winter even longer and grayer. So far, spring has been all over the place, including a solar eclipse. The early warm stretches had me itching to get outside and into my garden, always a work in progress.

To get inspiration and guidance for this spring, I’ve been reading lots about historical gardens. Every year, I feel like maybe this is the year I reinvent the wheel and dive into the spring season with more gusto than both my body and my wallet can tolerate.

My husband, bless his patient heart, often ends up as the one who has to take over whatever I’ve started but been unable to finish. Usually, that involves lifting things that are too heavy for my middle-aged mom back.

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When I was a child, asking for a giant plate of food that I would be totally unable to finish, my grandfather used to tell me that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I think of this gentle recrimination while I hobble around, trying to figure out where I’m going to plant each year’s new treasures. But you know what? No regrets.

The gardens of Bunny Mellon, in particular, have inspired me to think about the practice of gardening, as opposed to the idea of gardening.

Mellon was the designer of the original Rose Garden in the Kennedy White House, as well as a restoration of the gardens at Versailles (yes, in France) as well as a few other large-scale gardens, like the Kennedy Eternal Flame.

She was mostly self-taught, and by all accounts, she was perfectly willing to get her hands dirty. Mellon had a great understanding of both the art and science of gardening, and an entire staff at her disposal – arborists, architects and so on.

As I’ve perused books about great gardens, I’ve been struck by how unrelatable so many of them are. They’re very beautiful, but I don’t recognize anything of my own life in them.

But I do recognize the desire many people have for a beautiful space at their homes. Or maybe they want to be the kind of people who can coax something (tomatoes, for example) from nothing.

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Some folks want to do a little of both but are intimidated. For others, the distance between a patch of dirt and a feeling of connection with the earth is simply too big to cross. They’re afraid they’ll kill their plants or make a mess or “fail” in some other fashion. The myth of the green thumb is still alive and well.

Mostly, though, what is required to “succeed” in a garden is open-mindedness.

Several years ago, I took Master Gardener training through the Michigan State University Extension. I learned about soil and water tables and pest control and the best kinds of grass for different spots and so many different kinds of plants. Mostly, what I learned was how much I don’t know.

In the subsequent years, what has served me best is simply attention.

In this way, the garden is such a welcome antidote to so many of the ailments of our world. To be attuned to the garden is to remember, acutely, that time is cyclical, and that spring always comes.

It also, though, demands that we pay heed to the changing conditions of our planet, even in (literally) our own backyards. If we are lucky enough to stay in one place for several years, we see the way things change as time passes. Southeast Michigan used to be in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s hardy zone 6A, and now we’re in 6B. We’ve warmed enough in the last couple of decades to be reclassified. It’s strange to think of what the next few decades might bring.

I come from women who love to garden: My mother and grandmother are both avid gardeners, but when I was a child, neither really ever encouraged me to join them. In fact, it was kind of the opposite – the garden seemed more like a place where they went to be not exactly alone, but not with anyone else.

Now, in my 40s, I feel this same way. I go to my garden to be, not by myself, but rather with myself. If I have the chance to be out in the morning, I don’t take headphones with me, but if the rest of the world is awake, I prefer to close out the outside sounds and create my own world.

I’m aware of this paradox: that I wish to create my own world by being more in touch with the natural world. Digging in my yard allows me the space to hold that paradox.

(Some basics, if you’re starting a garden this year: We live in USDA hardiness zone 6B, a new designation. Our last frost date this year has been predicted to be May 8, 2024. This means that we will be unlikely to get a cold snap bad enough to kill crops after that. Many wise folks I know hold off until Memorial Day for tomatoes, eggplant and other hot weather crops. I start mine from seed, under a grow light, in the years when I think of it. Other years, I get seedlings from the nursery, or the market, or neighbors who have them. Sources abound. One thing about gardeners – they’re going to share. Enjoy the sunshine, the rain, the mud and especially, enjoy the endless possibility that your garden brings.)

Elisa Gurule is a writer and gardener in Metro Detroit. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and print.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Spring gardening in Michigan is a reminder of hope in full bloom