Garden Thugs
Yes, that's correct: garden thugs. Certainly there are garden pests of every variety, from slugs to caterpillers, to bugs and beetles and insects which feed on tender green leaves, emerging flower buds, laying their eggs in perpetuity under the leaves of haplessly-attacked foliage. I'm not talking about them, but rather garden thugs. The garden thugs are those plants whom we lavish attention and affection upon, those which we do admire for qualities specific to these plants, but whose habits bely and frustrate our expectations. These are plants whose wont it is to grow inordinately large, wide and tall, displacing other equally valuable, but somewhat less aggressive plants. Of course in some instances the rampant growth evinced by some of these thugs is our own fault, for treating them so gently, for so enhancing their growth medium that they cannot but react as they do. Then it is up to the gardener to deal with the resulting problems, to attempt to restore order in the garden, to tame the green thugs and teach them their place. It is a never-ending task, alas.
In the thuggish category there are many plants, some of them much valued, others of minimal value but which we like to keep around for aesthetic purposes, for other traits. My experience with Japanese quince, for example, is that this is one manner of garden thug. While it has wonderful bright orange blossoms in early spring, fragrant and lovely to behold, its stalks are extremely thorny and it tends to send underground runners hither and yon, disturbing the precincts of surrounding plants. The battle is unending.
We've a hummingbird (trumpet) vine, now six years old which leafs out lavishly, creeps up the brick wall of the side of the garage, reaches up and over into the eavestrough and toward the roof, but this vine has never once given us a flower. Alas, the soil in which it grows is too rich, augmented regularly by compost from our compost bins. It thrives selfishly, assured in its space, unwilling to render unto Caesar what is hers.
Princess spirea is yet another bush that grows happily, wherever it feels like it, however you feel about it. Tender, tiny spireas leap up out of the ground whever I look! Lilies-of-the Valley require a place in the garden where they can expand to a point, and then there is nowhere else they can go. Ours grow between, among and around alternating dwarf columnar cedars and Alberta spruce, between a garage wall and the sidewalk leading to the side door of the house.
Violets, another form of thuggy plant. We love them in the spring with their bright, shy little flowerheads, but they proliferate like crazy, claiming all space as their very own, irrespective of what else has been planted there. I tug them out of the ground, hearty roots and all continually, only to be faced with legions more. Johny-jump-ups fall into the same category.
Bergemot (Monarda) should be there, as well; lovely fragrant foliage and bright happy flowerheads, but they love the soil and they create and procreate ad infinitum. The same for four o'clocks, for tiger lilies, day lilies, columbine, cleome, morning glories, yellow loosestrife, evening primrose, Carpathian bellflowers, campanule, bergenia, even Annabelle hydrangea, encroaching past generously alloted space. Happily, pieces and chunks of all of them can be handed out generously to friends and neighbours to plague their gardens.
Then there's our neighbour's wonderful Himalayan orchids, now there's a truly immoderate thuggy pest. It's in the balsam family, as is impatients and jewelweed, but the Himalayan orchids are in a class of their own. Whenever I recognize some of the emerging plants in the spring having someone jumped our fence, out they come. Recognizing their pest quotient, my neighbours tugs them out of her grass, her driveway, her gardens, but on they come, relentlessly: tall stalks towering over everything else, with tiny pink floral displays. Yech!
Our neighbour once saw a vine growing up and through her large pine and tugged it out, saw it had a good root system and decided to plant in beside her back fence, adjacent to ours. This Engelman ivy has plagued us both ever since, but it wouldn't occur to her that it deserves extermination. It grows incredibly, voraciously just over our fence, threatening to strangle us with its dangling ends whenever they swiftly grow sufficiently long (if I've been too tardy in cutting them back), tangles its way up our neighbour's house siding, pulling itself through her admitted-tangle of shrubs and neglected lily patch between our two houses. Anathema!
Even some climbing roses can drive you up the wall. As they clamber up the wall, that is. And one must continually cut back, judiciously trim, gently and with care at first, then with passion and deliberation until one is left with a reasonably biddable climbing rose which has temporarily agreed to behave, shoot out buds and decline to tangle one in passing - rampant roses!
Truth to tell, I remain entranced, bewitched beyond redemption by these growing personalities with their tricky survival strategems.
In these gracefully beautiful organically fragrant, lovely, plentiful, useful, valued, multi-faceted organisms can we see parallels in human behaviour? Somewhat less adorable, perhaps.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 07, 2006
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