Mentors

Mentors are life's blood for gardeners. I was invited recently to the garden of one such mentor. Gardeners like to share. Ideas, plants, and time. I took the offer and visited next day. Driving down the driveway, lined by old trees and older dry laid stone walls, I slowed to postpone the eventual arrival thru the gate into a gracious garden well tended for decades by she and her husband but still shifting and perfecting. I have been here before but no year, no season, no day is the same to a garden.

Some gardens sing out at you w/ color and activity. They teem w/ energy and people. That can be a good thing. This garden however is one that wraps its arms around w/ a quiet gentle hug. To the unaware it looks as if man had nothing to do with its beauty. Only nature at its best behaved.

We walked around and discussed shapes, bloom sequence and wishes for garden gates rather than farm gates. And how fortunate that a large limb dropping in a storm only damaged the boxwood and not the house or anyone who lived there. Then we went out on the porch for tea complete w/ cucumber on buttered rounds. The visit was food for the soul, inspiring and heartening.

Soon I will get to visit my very first mentors. My parents. They live 9 hours south in Atlanta so I don't get to visit as much as I'd like. What I know is that as soon as the hugs are complete we will take a walk thru the garden. I will get the lowdown on what tragedies and successes there have been since last visit. I will find out what I can "steal" before I go and will pine after plants that won't survive my Zone 6.

My parents have nurtured this garden for nearly as long as my friend mentioned above has tended hers. This garden though is a city garden. To people who love plants this means that there are more terraces and beds than lawns and trees compete aggressively for light and space. After our walk we will sit on the terrace with a cold Coke and a bowl of potato chips. Altogether different yet the same. This visit too will be food for the soul, inspiring and heartening.