Gardening Excetera Column 12/11/11

DIRTY HARRY ON GARDENING
Dana Prom Smith

Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” More importantly, Georges Braque, the famous 20th century French Cubist, said: “In art, progress lies not in extension, but in a knowledge of limitations.” So it is with gardening in the high country. If we don’t know our limitations, we’re in trouble, but if we do, then we can have beautiful gardens.

Now, some local negativists gripe and whine about the limitations of gardening in Flagstaff, fondly recalling other climes and cultures where “all you had to do was stick a plant in the ground.” Now, those fondly-recalled climes are often hot, humid, sticky, buggy, and swathed in mosquitoes. More important than their short memories of yucky climates is their tendency to “look at the present through a rear-view mirror” to quote Marshall McLuhan. Lot’s wife also stole a fond rear-view glance at Sodom and Gomorrah as she fled their destruction and was turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26.)

Rear-view, salt-preserved people aside, gardening is a tutor for the way inevitability and necessity beget creativity. We all work within limits, and it’s important to know them. Freedom and responsibility are always limited, such as being born male or female. This awareness of limitations applies not only to art and life itself, but also to gardening in Flagstaff.

Although gardens are human constructions, as are paintings, they’re extensions of the wild, or else they won’t work. The wilderness is the testing grounds for gardens.

Braque began his career painting landscapes in 1908; however, he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting still lifes instead. Braque explained that he, “began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them.”

Braque likened the genius of gardening to a form of art. It’s reaching out to touch, hear, taste, and smell, to bring life up close and personal. Seeing often keeps things at a distance, as in “over there,” almost as an abstraction. However, if something is tangible, it is limited to time and circumstance. As Robert Frost said, “I play tennis better because the net is there.”

Rather than importing plants from out of our histories or imaginations that don’t belong in Flagstaff, it’s far better to use plants that work in Flagstaff. In gardening as in everything, we can never fully trust the advice of people who anticipate making money off their advice. It’s called caveat emptor, buyer beware. It’s not that they can’t be trusted, it’s that their advice needs to be checked. The late President Reagan said, “Trust and verify.”

Most of us have the greatest-ever research tool available sitting somewhere in our homes or at work. It’s called the Internet. The things to look for in the search are climate zones, last and first frosts, length of growing season, water, soil, and so forth. Perhaps, the best guide for gardening in the high country is Busco and Morin’s Native Plants for High Elevation Western Gardens. It’s the real skinny on plants suitable for Flagstaff’s gardens.

We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. If we take our cues from our environment, we can have splendid gardens in Flagstaff that will rival gardens anywhere. It’s all a matter of accepting the limitations inherent in the beauty of our environment. We’re not necessarily limited to native plants, but if we go beyond, we have to make sure they’re adaptable and not invasively toxic. As it is psychologically, so it is horticulturally, it’s authenticity, being faithful to ourselves and our place, not pretending to be someone else somewhere else, or, worse yet, wanting to be someone else somewhere else.
Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian and philosopher, told the story of an aged pious man, Rabbi Susya, who became fearful as death drew near. His friends chided him, "What! Are you afraid that you'll be reproached that you weren't more like Moses?" "No," the rabbi replied, "that I was not Susya."

Dana Prom Smith © Copyright 2011
Dana Prom Smith, editor of GARDENING ETCETERA, can be reached at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardner.blogspot.com.