Family Dynamics

Tovah Martin
To set the record straight, i dont garden of my own free will. i am held hostage. Always have been. not long after birth, some green thing or other (the memory is blurred) grabbed me. no struggle ensued, just complete and total submission. i joined the ranks. before i could even walk, i was crawling into the garden, i guess. As a child i monopolized sweater drawers for storing marigold seeds. Other little girls yearned for ballet slippers, while i clomped around in work boots. Adults baited me to name a future career choice: What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl? i didnt have to think twice. i wanted to be a butterfly. When i went to work at Logees Greenhouses, the world shrank around me. There was nothing beyond

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the splash of hoses, the hum of fans, the vines snarling my hair, and the thwack of a bird throwing itself against the greenhouse glass in a desperate effort to get free after it had squeezed through the vents. i was definitely not that bird. i arrived in wintertemporarily, i thoughtand took an upstairs bedroom in the little house beside the greenhouses. After dark, i could look down on the glass houses with their lights illuminating the plants and survey the green world within. i would watch the tropical plants, crawling around walls and walkways. i had a birds eye view of the passionflowers, bent on holding the world in their tendrils, and the eighty-year-old Ponderosa lemon bearing its weighty fruit. Thats what clinched the deal, reallywatching the tropicals all going crazy, groping and growing, sending their exotic roots down deep into the rich, brown new england soil beneath the greenhouse floor. Half the night, i would marvel at that contained world of tropical green, dappled in blossoms from the far reaches of the world, counterpoised against the howling winds and bitter temperatures of Connecticut. by daylight, i trotted the greenhouse aisles, pushing my way through the undergrowth, ducking below the overgrowth to tend the plants. Of course, it wasnt all acceptance and thank you, maam. i pruned back the rampant bougainvilleas and received only scratches for thanks.

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Logees hired me for my height, of that i am sure. Only i could fit into the sunken herb pit without smacking my head on the entrance beam. i could squeeze beneath the

Jasminum rex and around the Alstroemeria pulchella . That

was part of my job description. The plants had seniority. i answered to the allamanda. i ran out in thunderstorms to crank down the manual vents when rain threatened to drown a succulent. i dragged plants (thousands and thousands of plants) into safe havens in advance of hurricanes that might flatten them. And i wept a river when my favorite topiary lantana snapped in two. it didnt feel like either heroics or histrionics at the time. The point is that the collection was paramount. The plants were family. At some point, i shifted my focus outside the glass and began shoving plants into the ground. initially, it was just an exercise in seeing what the tropicals would do in open air (be free, Mandevilla boliviensis ), but later my focus strayed, into perennial borders and shrubberies. And i moved on from Logees. now i live in my own little cottage with perennials, tropicals, herbs, and vegetables scattered pretty much everywhere. Gardens surround the house, and houseplants pack the windowsills. it is my house, but the plants still reign. if a viburnum pops up like a cowlick smack dab in the middle of a garden, well, thats where it remains. i celebrate its radiant health and welcome compliments on its

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T OVA H M A R T i n

overachievement. not only dont i inflict a whole lot of design dictums on my plants, but i take offense when anyone offers a reality check. i always say that love is blind. You laugh, but its true. i walk the meadow and imagine that the goldenrod gives me the glad hand as i pass by. The space could have been a pool area, i suppose. Perhaps a tennis court. but that wouldnt be me. Or, us. but dont take this too far. When the goldenrod encroaches on the blueberries, its curtains. im idealistic, but there are limits. i read somewhere that any self-respecting garden should have a program. Meaning it should serve a function in your life. Really? The concept honestly never occurred to me. its nice that the pine wrestles the winds before those gusts plow into the house. but i didnt bring it onto the property demanding that it perform that job for me. i planted it because it called to me at the nursery. Then i tucked it into place. basically, im still bending myself to accommodate the botanicals in my life. Yes, membership in the knee-cracking, back-groaning society of gardeners has rewardsthe first bulbs of spring, the fragrances that float on a slight breeze, and the freshly opened flower but i dont see this relationship as reciprocal. i know whos boss. i wish i could say that i garden for the joggers who sputter and groan their way down Main street. but thats not why i garden. i garden for themfor all

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those green things that roped me into servitude years ago. i like to think they need me.

An avid (verging on obsessed) gardener, indoors and out, TOVA H M A RT i n has worked her way through the gardening gamut. Her areas of specialty include bulbs, heirloom gardening, terrariums, houseplants, tropicals, exotics (especially begonias), cottage gardening, and horticultural therapy. Through writing she shares the contagion from her Connecticut garden.

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