Time in a garden: Dads who garden

While thinking about a topic for the column this month, I unexpectedly ran into one of those random pop-ups on the internet: a view of our gardens from seven years ago. And what a difference those seven years made.

What started out as a tiny spruce now is a story-and-a-half high in the "living wall" along our lot line. A delicate smoke tree’s feathery red branches and leaves are elbowing it for space. Alongside them, the dwarf lilac, forsythia and bridal wreath form a dense wash of green. Toss in a willow requiring regular pruning to keep it in bounds and the result is as solid as any structure of brick or stone. Nestled at the feet of these trees and bushes, ferns and hostas and miscellaneous plants salvaged from other gardens in the yard are carving out a border all their own.

What stands there today is beyond my wildest imaginings. Our investment in those bedraggled plants from the "clearance" racks needed only needed some TLC to bring out the best in them.

While all of this started as "my" project, over the years my husband invested a lot of energy and caring of his own in that lot-line garden. He comes by his "chops" as a gardener honestly. Decades ago, his Sicilian pastor dad was an amazing gardener: "rescuing" wild fig trees from the Long Island woods and moving them in and out of the house to keep them safe from the fierce snows of the northeasters that battered his garden plot every winter.

And so with Father's Day just behind us, it seems as good a time as any to salute the many dads who garden. Gardening takes skill and muscle, not just dainty dead-heading. And some of the world’s best-known gardeners, among them Britain’s Monty Don, are guys who chose gardening as their favorite "sport." What incredible role models these guys are for generations of young men-in-the-making who could otherwise only assume that "real" guys play football, not wield shovels and trowels.

Gardening like parenting or just about anything you care to name isn’t about gender. It is about hefty doses of patience and an unwavering faith in the future, a belief that from barren sandy patches of lawn, beauty can grow and flower. Nurturing is hard work. But like that once pitiful lot-line garden of ours, living walls can over time grow tall and healthy and strong.

If none of that sounds particularly "macho," thank goodness. The leadership of this all too often violent world could stand hefty doses of time in a garden to help get their priorities straight. As the Indian proverb says, “Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit."

Here’s to the guys who garden. Ya gotta love ‘em.

Author of the 2006 regional best-selling novel "Time in a Garden," Mary Agria has won six consecutive awards from Michigan Garden Clubs for feature writing since 2017. Her "An Itinerant Gardener's Book of Days," gardening novels and books on gardening and spirituality are available online and from local bookstores.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Time in a garden: Dads who garden