An April view of the hillside mixed border.
ONE FALL WHEN I WAS ABOUT NINE, MY Grandmother Thorpe gave me a bag of bulbs and said, “You go out and plant them.” I felt more than a little trepidation—I had never planted anything without her supervision—but she reassured me, “You can do it. You won’t go wrong!” Her generosity could have been ruinous to her flower border, but I got the bulbs planted with no mishaps. The next spring, when they bloomed, I almost burst with pride when she told all her friends, “David did that!” From that moment I knew I was a gardener, and after all these years it remains the core of how I define myself.
More than anything else in my career, I want to do what my grandmother did for me: empower people to garden. This is a large part of why I lecture around the country, why I have taught at Longwood Gardens for many years, why we open our garden to the public for tours, why I have become an active member in numerous plant societies—and why I wanted to write this book. People say I am a good horticulturist, but I also feel I am a good horticultural cheerleader, since I always try to emphasize the cheer. The path to horticultural enlightenment may be littered with countless missteps, mistakes, and (may I be honest?) dead plants. But the wonder of gardening is that it always keeps us looking forward, since there is always the next flower to bloom, the next season, next year.
When my Grandmother Culp moved from near Pittsburgh to St. Petersburg, Florida, her roses went with her. Even though the plants struggled in that too-warm climate, she told me that she loved roses too much to ever do without them. Her passion for plants has become my passion. Perhaps it is also because of her that I am an undaunted gardener. Telling me I cannot grow a particular plant is a sure way to get me to try it.
Rather than focusing on limitations, I prefer to dwell in the much more pleasant realm of possibilities. When I look at a particular genus, I see all the possibilities embraced within it: the range of colors, sizes, forms, and seasons of bloom. When I see a particular piece of ground, I am always asking how many plants I can fit there, how much beauty and pleasure I can wring out of that space. I have learned over time that no is rarely the right answer; with energy and ingenuity, almost any question can be answered with yes.
Yet I need to add that patience is truly a virtue, because time is one of a gardener’s greatest allies. With the passage of time, plants grow and our instincts and abilities as gardeners mature and improve. Nothing happens in an instant in the garden; beautiful moments always unfold on their own schedule, in their own sweet time. We may savor that sweetness, and remember it for the rest of our lives. But for anyone who loves gardens, it also helps to love being a gardener, since it is only the continuum of day-to-day work that makes those moments possible.
We grow many tender plants in containers. In this example, Eucomis comosa ‘Sparkling Burgundy’, with its striking purple stem, is grown beside Euphorbia xmartinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’, a plant whose color is very useful in combinations.
