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 There
is a special pleasure in watching a garden come to
life the second spring after it is planted. The
perennials re-emerge, often looking much more
settled and established than the season before. The
soil is already dug and prepared, so the gardener
can spend time puttering in the lighter work of
adding new plants, cultivating, and trimming away
old growth to make room for new.
There is
another pleasure in a garden's second
spring: volunteer seedlings. When I was
younger, I attempted to be a very tidy gardener: I
did not let plants go to seed (unless I was raising
them for the seeds). Now, I often do. It's fun to
see a lettuce plant in the summer, with its
enormous vertical stalk and crown of yellow
flowers. It's a part of the plant's nature that we
seldom see, remind us that it is more than a source
of tender leaves for salad: it is a living thing,
with a will to express its nature, the blossom and
reproduce before it dies.
So this
spring I have lettuce seedlings popping up, near
last year's planting but sometimes in funny little
nooks and corners, like the edge of the asparagus
bed.
Cilantro is
notorious for bolting (going to seed) very rapidly
in the warm months - gardeners often plant a new
crop every few weeks to compensate for its
quickness. Of course, instead of seeing the flower
heads as the end of the cilantro crop, one can see
it as the beginning of the coriander crop. The
dried pods are easy to harvest and will keep the
spice rack filled quite nicely for months. The
seeds that fell to the ground last fall have now
sprouted, happy and dense, amongst the newly
planted onions.
The violas
are similarly free-scattering, with seedlings
emerging here, there, and everywhere. They are a
delight, often coming back in slightly different
color shades and patterns than the original bedding
plants from the nursery.
Besides the
pleasure of seeing life return in this fashion,
these second-generation plants are also helping to
re-create and re-invent the garden. Over time, they
will settle into the areas where they thrive most
naturally. Also, if you allow them to acquire at
least some of their expanded domain of ground, the
garden will, over time, become one that is more
natural for the local environment. Plants that do
well during a typical year's weather and in the
local soil, will predominate. Ultimately, the
patchwork of successful perennials and re-seeded
volunteers will start to feel like a natural stand
of plants, with the plants' intentions more in
evidence than the gardener's.
Of course, I
will always grow some plants just because I enjoy
them, even if they do not take care of themselves
very well from year to year. But, at heart, I like
a garden that is a blend of my own intentions and
the ways of nature. I see it as a collaborative
project, one in which I make suggestions and to
which I contribute some labor, but that in the
end is not my own personal creation.
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