All things green & beautiful

They say it’s good therapy, to me it’s simply gardening.

I’m onto my second attempt to put up my dream garden. The first turned out to be a cemetery for my plants, including a bougainvillea tree, one of the toughest plants under the sun that can live with little water, perfect for EDSA heat. So you can only imagine my ability to murder them. It was quite simple: neglect. The out-of-town trips for weeks left my plants with no water and so, the requisite that I bought for my garden this time, is a timer for my sprinkler. And voila! So far so good, but too soon to call myself a green thumb.

The first batch of plants that I bought are Passion Vines that spur red flowers, ever so generously. I got them in a garden fair in Quezon City hall. They are perfect for the screen between me and my neighbor. Then I got Thunbergia vines in white and blue variants, and a couple of herbs: rosemary, stevia and tarragon. Though I can’t cook, I wanted to serve my visitors tea from my garden. My suki, Nene Fermin in Manila Seedling Bank suggested that I start labeling my plants so that I know them. Nene was not a born horticulturist but she married one, her husband Ben. The best way to get acquainted with the plants, she says, is to know their name, to get personal. The learning will follow.

Curiously, when I start talking about gardening with some people, they remark "hindi mo naman kinakausap ang halaman mo?" (you have not been talking to your plants yet, have you?), pertaining to one personality who was known for talking to the plants. Of course, I don’t admit it, lest I be called a cuckoo. It’s something that non-gardening people simply cannot understand, but to those who love plants, singing to them is quite common. Some may not understand the bond that a gardener has with his garden. In fact, a plant lover that I know confessed to killing his plants because of all the negative emotions that he had all bottled up. I was also surprised that this could be, but I understood. If a gardener can share in the joy for the abundance of life in a garden, then the garden must also share in the life of the gardener.

Right now, I diligently follow the instructions of my gardener friends:

"Water your plants twice a day because it’s summer" or "don’t put them under the sun right away from the shade, otherwise they will burn." I was nodding my head pretending to understand all these instructions. I didn’t know that burn, really meant burn! Similar to what happens to a piece of paper when you burn its edges. It was getting too hot for my herbs, thus the need to water them more. It’s all trial and error with my garden. I am a science student (and a plumber) in my garden. I tinkered with the water sprinkler system getting soaked in the process of positioning and repositioning it, making sure that all my plants get ample water. Slowly, I discover what works and what does not. I learned that breaking a vine while guiding it through my trellis was not such a bad thing after all, because days after the plant grew more branches! I now trot my garden with my pruning shears!

After spending mornings and afternoons (and evenings!) in my garden, I bear witness to life: a flower blooms, a vine instinctively circling itself in the trellis, the scent of rosemary, everything blooming and growing, a lady bug finding a new home, or a maya bird stopping over for a break on weekend mornings. Sigh!

This sense of awe extends beyond the four walls of my little garden. As I was on route to a coverage in Rizal, I took notice of the various flowers that lined the streets like wild grass. And it was a pleasant surprise seeing that most of the small houses in the provinces had a small garden, obviously, tendered by the owners themselves and not a hired landscape artist or a hardinero.

While driving around the city, I stopped my car to pick a flower that caught my fancy and brought it immediately to my gardener, since I didn’t know its name.

I am an apprentice when it comes to gardening and maybe someday I, too, will know all names of the different plants. But something that a gardener can never master and fully anticipate is the many surprises that life — a garden, will bring.

As my Tita Baby Alarcon, a horticulturist says, "A gardener never grows old"

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