June 2023
By Richard Fleming
Photo courtesy of Ales Krivec
We older folks have a hard time with many activities young and middle-aged people take for granted. I have discussed several previously, like household repairs or driving. With warm weather upon us, now is a good time to examine the challenges gardening presents to folks traversing their golden years.
My wife and I live in a house with a small yard, less than a tenth of an acre. During our 30 years here we have had average success cultivating trees, bushes, shrubs, succulents, and various flowering plants. We kept putting off the concept of vegetable gardening until “next year.” But after so many “next years,” I doubt we will ever venture into that realm. The reasons will be clear shortly.
Three decades is sufficient time to witness many plants growing old and ending up in the yard waste container. Some age more rapidly than others, especially if they are mismanaged. I have learned that plants do not enjoy being over-watered or under-watered. They can succumb when infected with fungi, powdery mildew, aphids, whiteflies, spider mites, and assorted other infections. Over many years my best efforts to treat plant diseases rarely proved successful. I’ve come to the realization that I am not a good plant doctor. Actually I’m not a good plant nurse, physical therapist, pharmacist, or orderly either.
Fortunately we have a landscaping service. They come every two weeks and perform some basic upkeep but much remains to be done. These tasks are becoming more challenging as the years pass by. The bending movement required to pull weeds or trim dead flowers is increasingly taxing. Climbing a tall ladder to clip dead tree branches is becoming a bit dicey. Two weeks ago, my wife and I undertook our annual ritual of stringing Bhutanese prayer flags between trees in our back yard. Suffice it to say that next year these colorful flags will be strung from lower branches. Though they look peaceful and protective, prayer flags provide no guarantees against trauma from falling off high ladders.
I am coming to learn the key to successful golden years gardening is tempering my expectations. Why should I be bothered by some weeds growing in our artificial turf? Or between paving stones in our backyard? Or other weird places? They are living objects doing their best to survive in a hostile world and I suspect they play a positive role in our yard’s ecosystem. And those dead branches 20 feet up in the sky? Well, birds don’t seem to be bothered by them so why should I?
There is a weed growing out of the gutter on the second floor of our house. How exactly am I supposed to deal with this? Should I even try?
Photo by Richard Fleming
But there is one aspect of yard maintenance where tempering my expectations is difficult. I’m referring to what happens when a dead tree or plant needs replacement. Now that I’m in my 70s, the horizon grows closer every year. The reality is that new plants can take many years before they attain a pleasing size. And most nurseries only sell young plants and trees. Several years ago we had to replace the 25-year-old maple tree in our front yard. It was never large and the poor thing had become very ill. We asked some tree experts about replacing it with a mature tree that already had some height to it. This request was met with some not-so-subtle eye rolling. We were told mature trees are very expensive, hard to find, and they often fail to establish their root systems when transplanted. Such trees are more subject to disease and may not survive. “Besides,” the tree guy said, “trees grow, and in 10 or 15 years it will be starting to look nice and tall. And it’ll be healthy.”
I tend to defer to experts in fields I know little about, but the 10-15 years concept stuck in my craw. It is easy for a 30-year-old tree guy to casually talk about so many years in the future. But for me, that time frame is questionable. I may not be around when the tree is starting to look “nice and tall.” I’m all for planting trees my grandchildren can enjoy when they become adults, but I would not mind enjoying them also. Our ultimate decision was rooted, so to speak, in the lack of mature trees available to buy. So we planted a one-year-old pistache. It is now a six-year-old tree, cute, filling out, and maybe 8 feet high. I hope my grandkids will appreciate this tree as they grow old.
Succulents are supposed to be easy to care for. But I never got that memo. This plant will soon find itself in the yard waste bin.
Photo by Richard Fleming
Shortening time frames come in to play with other plants. Last year we had to take out a hedge that was a hedge in name only. Each plant was seriously infested with some kind of disease that could not be eradicated. At our request, the gardening service replaced the sick plants with ten rose bushes that will allegedly grow into a hedge over the next five years or so. Currently, after a year of growth, the bushes are a bit larger. They look nice, but it will clearly take some time for them to link together into a hedgerow. I keep telling myself to remain patient. And I keep reminding myself that five years is much better than 10-15.
So, when it comes to gardening during the golden years, my recommendation is to keep your expectations low. Remember that deferred gratification is a virtue. I am learning that enjoyment can be found in small trees and tiny bushes. When I look at them, they spur my imagination to think of what they will look like in the distant future. And having an active imagination is an important key to graceful aging.
* * *
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to be notified of future posts. Subscriptions are free.
Gardening, my therapy, use to be, but after fifty years of landscaping, weeding, and feeding my now mature plantings how do I give up my needed therapy with my plants versus a two-footed shrink that charges me how to fight depression?
I’m depressed again because my fifty-year-old almond tree that has outlived its 25-years expectancy. Even though we climbed this beautiful tree for the last time by cutting down three gnarly limbs I never enjoyed a single almond it ever produced because the birds found the blossoms too irresistible.
This tree gave me shade at the top of my hill while I sat in my chair enjoying the views of the golden hills around me after spending hours pulling weeds giving me satisfaction.
My hope for decades was when grandchildren came along we would build a treehouse together and share the same view of mother nature providing me with all the free therapy needed to continue on digging, planting, and talking with my plants about what love they continue to give me.
Oh my, Dahlias I just purchased them for the first time, but where to plant them since they require six hours of sun? I now have shade after fifty years thanks to my years of digging, planting, and feeding my therapy, for free.
Wait for free? Haven’t you noticed the price of dirt, feed, and plants has doubled in fifty years?
Bobbie Jo
We have moved into several new developments in the past 30 years with the last move in 2020. In each case, I found myself impatient for those newly planted tiny trees and shrubs to grow into a mature size, and in each case, they did and we moved before we could enjoy them for any length of time. Like you, I mourned a bit for the ability to see the fruition of our choices, but I also took this as a lesson to appreciate each mm of growth, each blossum, and each variety that survived some very harsh winters.
I do occasionally long for those old Topeka neighborshoods with the huge mature oaks and maples — after all, that is what we embraced as children growing up. In my mind I can still smell the tannins in the fall. I owe the love I have for trees (and plants in general) to those beautiful memories, so I shall be grateful for any that thrive in spite of the environment and my amateur care.
Great article! Thank you. I must tell you, tho, that the weed in your gutter means there’s more detritus where that came from that will block your drainage. I would suggest hiring someone to come and clean them out. Get some young buck to get up on that ladder. You’re still young enough to write a check. 😂
In a photo of the house my parents built, taken around the time our family moved in when I had my first birthday, the house appears to be on the crest of a hill with no vegetation in sight taller than blades of grass. Trees and some honeysuckle bushes appeared during my childhood and by the time I was 10 I could climb the sycamore tree in the back yard to a fairly scary height. In the front, the house was fully visible from the street when I left home for college and an adult life on the far edges of the country, and beyond.
In 2001 I dropped in unannounced and got a tour from the lovely 21st-century owner of the house I grew up in. She had done wonderful things to the house and the landscaping of the 3/4 acre lot was beautiful. Now—or at least as of July 2021 when a Google Street View car passed by—only a bit of the roofline is visible from the street through the thick vegetation surrounding the house. The landscaping is lush and beautiful.
I am delighted by the state of the property seven decades after the b&w snapshot was made of a lonely house that was, well, just a house. It’s the lushness of the trees and bushes and flowering plants planted by the original owners and those since the property was passed into the hands of other, dedicated stewards four decades ago.
So instead of keeping expectations low, I counsel gardening expansively. Though I feel ever more acutely how the time left to me grows short, the vegetation around my childhood home returns me to the longue durée that I think we all should seize. Active imagination is indeed key, but not so that we merely, only enjoy small trees and tiny bushes as we age gracefully. Forcefully project those trees and bushes into the future—dream a future you would want, or want for others, and set it on its way. Forget the graceful ageing. Set something in motion that will hide the view of your house from the street, something that will be big in 25 years, or 100. There in the garden, age fiercely.
Imagine, plant … redwoods.
The Parkwoods apartment complex I lived in back in Oakland had burned to the ground in 30 minutes back in the Oakland fire. When they rebuilt on the 90s, they wanted trees that grew fast to enhance the property. So they planted 6-10 redwoods around each building planting them 10 feet from each building. By the time I moved there in 2015, I found myself surrounded by 50-60 foot potential “torches”. And looking out my back balcony, I could almost see the spot where the Oakland fire started. Made me very nervous. The downside of fast growing trees!
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now…” states the proverb quoted by Powers in The Overstory. To that I would add, we recently visited Portugal and learned that cork trees can be harvested for cork when they are 25 years ago, and then every 9 years, but only at their third harvest and thereafter does their cork become good enough to use for high-quality wine stoppers. We are always planting in the garden and elsewhere for our (or someone’s) children and grandchildren…..
gardening at this age is a “pay it forward” to the next generation proposition, full in the knowledge that whoever occupies the house after us will likely have a totally different take on what will be desirable and pleasing. Zen rock garden anyone?