Sometimes by the time midsummer arrives in my garden I can take a breath. Other times that breath is more of an exasperated sigh. It’s a rhythm that’s as regular as rain in my garden. Although, rain is far from regular in a Pacific Northwest summer which leaves me hours at the end of hose to critique the state of affairs in my garden.

Especially so this year.

Last spring,  Debra Prinzing and I co-hosted a tour/workshop in Amsterdam and Belgium. Deb is a dear forever friend and oh how we love a road trip adventure and this was a chance to take our typical MO to a delightful river boat cruising canals and waterways through the extraordinarily beautiful, flat (so flat!) landscape. Back here at home, most of spring was spent prepping for the trip followed by two weeks of travel and another month trying to catch up on what I didn’t get to before I left. Which is all to say, much of the garden never got dealt with: planting, pruning, soil improvement. *big exasperated sigh*

It’s not pretty. Pouting in this season of my discontent, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what went wrong. And then it hit me — my garden has grown beyond my reach. An untenable — and more importantly, un-tendable — situation. Having a garden that’s difficult to wrangle is a time-honored recipe for unleashing a feral garden.

At this point I should mention, those parts of the garden that tootle along independent of me are fine, maybe a little weedier and yes some plants need to be divided, but these are things only visible to a disgruntled gardener (me). Everyone else sees bobbing blooms on the angel’s fishing wand plants that have seeded themselves about; the oak leaf hydrangea is in full flower (discreetly obscuring the faded blooms from last season that never got removed); the PCH iris (that need to be divided) bloomed their fool heads off, and dozens of skinny stems of carefree Verbena bonariensis, my favorite self sower, punctuate the ornamental grasses.

What does it say about me when the garden does better without my input?

Last week, perched at the top of the back steps where all garden decisions and deeds are plotted, I think I came up with a strategy for restoring order. There will be ladders and saws, loppers and pruners. Let me explain.

I love the contrast of clipped garden forms alongside unfettered growth. Several boxwood orbs and a 4-foot cone indulge my love of snip, snip, snip when I get around to it but suffer a year of shagginess just fine. The “pleached” hedge of crabapples, not so much.

My semi-pleached crabapple hedge on a very brief moment in spring.

My semi-pleached crabapple hedge in winter is lovely – provided it get’s proper shaping.

One of my favorite parts of touring Amsterdam and Belgium in spring was seeing pollarded trees in spring nakedness with knobby knuckled limbs a result of years of strict management. Formally clipped trees and shrubs are a Dutch tradition, sometimes due to lack of space, sometimes strictly for the architectural structure.

I mean, come on! Look at that brilliant work in the garden of Martje van den Bosch

Visiting the garden of Martje van den Bosch in Demen and seeing a remarkable display of brilliantly curated plantings of tulips and early season perennials put me in my color-loving happy place, but the masterfully pruned shrubs and trees dividing the sixteen garden rooms were what really blew my mind. Look at how those scallops in the beech hedge cradle the hornbeam in the distance. Those trees on the right look like the bristly little Christmas trees I put out during the holidays. I mean — come on!

Wherever we went, tiny street side gardens with barely a meter of planting space made room for pruned plane trees, a pleached hedge or an espaliered vine.

Pollarded plane trees in Haarlem.

the Netherlands

Pleaching on the streets of Haarlem (left) and in the remarkable Keukenhof Gardens.

This is what a pleached hedge is supposed to look like.

A far more realistic depiction of my semi-pleached crabapple hedge

This is what my pleached crabapple hedge looks like for most of the year. And I’m not thrilled with the flopping germander either.

So here’s my plan. In a month or so I will be cutting my unsuccessfully pleached crabapples back to a skeleton scaffold. Sure, I’ll miss the seasonal flowers and fruit for a year or two but I’m hoping this admittedly drastic approach will restore control and teach me something about maintaining a garden within my grasp.

I know some gardeners disparage this heavy-handed approach to growing woody plants in a confined space. But isn’t this what gardening is all about – the hand of the gardener in concert with a growing space and within the governing rules of nature?

I believe the relationship between those who tend and the environment under their care is paramount. I’ve always loved an ambitious (sometimes hare-brained) garden project and clearly have shown I’m willing to fail in the process.

Meanwhile, you should see my draft bulb order!!! 

Flower market in Haarlem. The sign for those gigantic sleeves of blue hyacinths said two bunches for five Euros.