I have a graveyard of dead flowers and a spreadsheet with sobering evidence to prove my point. Today in celebration of Garden Rant’s 20th anniversary, I am finally attempting a genuine rant after 14 years stationed here at the exalted Garden Rant desk. My preference is for stories that blend people, gardens, and cultures. My apologies. I was an undergraduate sociology major in the Paleozoic era. By good fortune, my talented Garden Rant colleagues have always provided cover for me with penetrating opinions and dead-on wit.

Tim Barnwell photo

A few dead plants here and there are not a tragedy.

Nursery plants are not created with inalienable rights.

I tried and it died. It’s that simple.

Allen Bush 1982. J.C. Raulston photo.

For 15 years I owned Holbrook Farm and Nursery, a hand-to-mouth retail mail order business in Fletcher, North Carolina. I specialized in perennials. My customers lost plants. Every gardener does. I played sorrowful with the fake sympathy of a funeral home director. I don’t grieve for long for dead plants.

Tim Barnwell photo

 

Flowers have never been raised from the dead, but some customers, truly only a few, expected that I substitute a dead ringer. I obliged with a replacement plant. It’s simpler than a showdown about who or what is to blame.

Later, I spent another 22 years in the wholesale business as Director of Special Projects for Jelitto Perennial Seeds. In the nursery world, wholesale is a world apart from retail. Wholesalers will speak openly about how many ways there are to kill a plant. Retailers would rather stay mum.

You are responsible

You are responsible for the plants you brought home from the garden center. If your plants looked good on the sales table, you are enlisted to grow or kill them on your turf. Heaven forbid you drive a car into in a ditch on the way home.

A plant guarantee for life eternal?

In my professional career I enjoyed conversations with customers who needed encouragement, but there is a fine line. What is too much? Those who are new to gardening grow squeamish with too many disclaimers.

You need to water your plants initially, and periodically when needed, but not too much; and you may encounter temperatures too hot or too cold. And don’t let pooch trample the garden.

I have recited gardening perils more times than the Lord’s Prayer.

At some point teaching lessons becomes counterproductive. Eyes glaze over. Confidence melts.

The level of trust disappears.

There is a knockout punch.

“Your plants will live if it’s god’s will,” I explained while, in the back of my mind, I sang  “Don’t forget to put to roses on my grave.”

Molly Bush with Nell and Bell  in 1992

I waited for someone to question god’s will.

No one did.

The question triggered a moment of puzzlement and a response: “Well, of course. I should have thought of that.”

Elon Musk has plans for a “self-sustaining city on Mars,” but I doubt Elon will be packing a trowel on lift off. Please don’t go. I hope you will stay in the garden here on earth till death do us part.