I’m not one of those law-and- order gardeners who demands that everything has a place and woe be to any plant that moves from its allotted spot.
Serendipity is fine by me. My plants can mingle like guests at a dinner party.
But sometimes things get ugly and mingling turns to brawling. In this case the gardener has no choice but to intervene.
I knew there were problems in one of my flower beds in the backyard. Smooth brome grass, the worst weed in my garden, has been romping around this bed for several years. I was under the impression that I’d been keeping the upper hand over this menace. That is, until a couple of weeks ago, when I took advantage of a sunny day and spring’s friable soil to do my annual smooth brome rout.
Astonished, I discovered that from 1 square foot of soil I had purged an entire bucketful of roots. Now on notice, I reappraised the situation and realized that there was little left in this 60-square-foot bed beyond smooth brome and an ornamental strawberry that had crossed the walk from where I had originally planted it. Mint had also invaded from the other side of the bed.
One hardy fall chrysanthemum, two daylilies, an iris, a catmint and a dwarf buddleia survived. Nothing else I had planted was tough enough to withstand the onslaught, a fact that was underscored by the dozen or so nursery tags that marked battle sites where other desirable plants had lost the fight.
Clearly it was time for a complete makeover. Not an easy decision, because there’s no getting around it: Garden renovation is grueling work, much more so than starting from scratch. But this is the price gardeners pay for procrastination. So I steeled my resolve and dug in.
First I carefully removed every one of the plants I intended to keep and ensconced them in the vegetable garden (thanking my lucky stars that I’d never gotten around to planting lettuce and peas on St. Patrick’s Day this season). Next I used a spading fork and dug out all of the interlopers.
The mint and the strawberries had the good manners to stay on the surface, but 90 percent of the stealthy brome was underground and up to 8 inches deep, making its removal problematic. (Our phone line runs through this area. Although I have cut it in the past, somehow I managed to avoid it this time.) Fast forward past six hours of forking through the soil looking for missed bits of root, every one of which will spawn a new smooth brome.
Taking advantage of the cleared bed, to amend the soil I broadcast 2 inches of homemade compost and a sprinkling of organic lawn fertilizer. After turning these in to a shovel’s depth, I returned all of the evacuees and set a sprinkler to water them in.
Order is once again restored, at least temporarily. If I were to wager on who will ultimately win, the smooth brome or me, I’d bet on the tenacious grass.
Marcia Tatroe is author of the forthcoming “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” due from Johnson Books this spring.
