I was thinking today while mulching my roses, that I don’t like having garden visitors. I mean, I like having people over and entertaining. But I don’t like people touring my garden. It’s not meant for visitors. My garden is meant for me.
I frequently get people asking me to see my garden. I share photos of flowers on social media and people want to see my garden. I have a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, and when people learn this, they want me to give them a tour of my garden. Of course, they also want me to give them free advice on what to do with their garden. But when they want to see my garden, I tell them, “It’s really not that kind of garden.” My spouse usually intervenes, and says “it’s not a designed garden, it’s just a collection.” Which is is not really true. It is intensely designed, just not designed as I would if I were designing for a client, or for a public space. It’s designed to be a space for me to collect plants. It’s not designed as a botanic garden. It’s not designed as a plaza. It’s not a public garden meant for people to stroll through and “take in” the flowers. It’s not a showpiece. What it is, is a private garden. As such there are inherent qualities that make me dread having garden visitors. And let me be specific. When I say “garden visitor” I don’t mean “visitor” or “guest.” I mean someone who specifically wanted to see my garden. Well, I guess they can be the same thing at times.
The first words from a garden visitor’s mouth can tell me if the rest of the visit is going to go badly. Often it is “Your garden is not what I expected.” So, being the polite host, I take the bait, and say “What did you expect?” They say “I don’t know, but not this.” It would be different if it was a delighted comment, but I find the comment and the facial expression to be unfathomable. At this point, I usually want to say, “Okay, well you can leave now.” Or, “Well I warned you, that it’s not designed as a public space.” And they say, “I know, it’s just not what I expected.” Why do people have expectations? Why would you go to someone’s home and expect…something? And worse, why would you tell your host that you are disappointed or disillusioned?
I had one visitor come to my garden and say “Your plants look weird.” I let it go for a while, and they said nothing more. I looked at my plants, they looked fine to me. They looked healthy. They weren’t diseased. They weren’t pruned into weird poodles. In the silence that followed, I said, “Oh, okay.” The visitor just repeated himself, “they just look weird.” Not knowing what to say, I asked “Why?” He said, “they just don’t look like your usual plants.” Okay, that’s true. At the time, I didn’t grow many common plants at all.
Another visitor was enthralled with my roses. She seized one that had just opened and exclaimed how beautiful it was. I’m good with that. Then she started stroking the rose, And when I mean stroking the flower, I mean stroking. Like running her fingers over the face of the flower. Strongly. Until the petals became bruised and fell off. Finally she looked around and looked for another to destroy. Now this is a friend that I love dearly, but this was very strange behavior to me. I quickly showed her through the garden, moving her on before she could molest another flower.
Recently, some relatives came to visit. The husband decided to take a jog around the garden. There is a concrete border of sorts around the garden 8” or so wide, but it is not meant to be a path, but a mowing border (I have taken out the lawn). It is not continuous and at one point there are boulders interrupting it. It was installed before I moved in, and instead of the expense of removing a large concrete border, I left it. He complained that this path is not good for his walk and that the boulders are in the way. He promptly stepped on some of my plants which were in his way. I said, “Please watch where you are stepping, there are some plants under your feet.” He said “Oh, and stepped back, onto some other plants that I had been coddling along. “They’ll grow back,” he said. When my mother was visiting, she was helping me as I pruned back the Perovskia. As she was wandering around picking up prunings, I pointed out a small agave. “Don’t step on that,” I said. “What?” she said, walking toward me and directly onto the agave, destroying the perfect leaves. I’m surprised it didn’t puncture her foot. Better the agave get damaged than her I guess. But that damaged leaf is going to be there for the long life of agave leaves and will bug me every time I see it. Visitors always find something to destroy while they visit. Frequently they step on something, then back up and step on something else. It’s not a garden for visitors. When I go through my garden, I navigate my way around my garden because I know the way, and it’s not on top of plants. Sometimes visitors pick a flower to look at and toss it aside when they are done. Some people pull a bunch of leaves or flowers off a plant, rub it between their hands, take a whiff and then toss the remains. Without so much as a “mother may I?” Why would you do that in someone else’s garden?. I consider this a violation of garden visitor etiquette. Yep, visitors destroy things.
The wife of the man complaining that there was no jogging path said, “I saw those little cacti in your garden and I wanted to pull them out.” Which brings up another topic. Why do garden visitors always want to give advice? It frequently starts with “You know what your garden needs?” The hair on my neck go up at that point. Some people just flat out say “Your garden needs…” One person said “vegetables.” Another said “sculpture.” Another said “more color.” I want to say, “I don’t know, it’s seems perfect just how it is, to me. Good thing it’s my garden and not yours.” One person pointed out that there was a space where a plant had died. “There’s a plant missing” they said. “Yes, someone stepped on it,” I said. As I said, my garden is not for visitors, it’s for me.
