There are six of them, these bare, scraggly masses of roots topped by thorny sticks. Except for the thorns, they look like the trees of life in Victorian woodcuts that drew on Norse and Celtic mythology, minus the life part. They’re leafless and brittle and almost uninspiring.
But they carry this message: My ability to delude myself about plants lives and breathes, as surely as the broccoli raab that overwintered in my new blackberry patch.
Sure, I can learn how to plant bare-root roses. Sure, I can dig six planting holes in hideous hardpan soil that baked under landscape cloth and mulch for three years. Sure , I can get that done by the time the roses I ordered arrive.
And surely, while I’m sitting in a meeting hall at the Denver Botanic Gardens, listening to Matt Douglas of High Country Roses describe his favorites, I won’t be tempted by every single fragrant, luscious, exuberant variety he extolls.
These bare-root plants, swaddled in wet towels in the cool garage, are blaring a reminder: Gardening is not about restraint.
Nope. Gardening is about abundance, about more, too much, so much that you have to give it away. It’s about plants that do too well, defy your wildest dreams to grow bigger, spread wider, seed themselves all over, become beautiful problems.
It’s about that year when the sun was so gentle and the rain so regular that harvesting the cucumber patch filled a half-bushel basket every other day and I had to turn to canning cucumber relish in self-defense. It’s about an overgrown, fuchsia canopy of crabapple blossoms chock-full of bees. It’s about abandon and surrender, about leaning toward joy like a houseplant leans toward sun.
More is what we aim to give you this year. More gorgeous gardens and essential advice. More bad bugs to thwart and natural ways to do it. More ways to grow, if not the most abundant tomatoes of your life, the tastiest and prettiest ones. More ways to make your landscape beautiful, productive and hospitable.
One of the new ways we’ll do that in 2015 is through video. Look for video advice from Punch List columnist Betty Cahill on DPTV, with multiple segments viewable at . We’ll continue to bring you the best moments from the gardens of Marcia Tatroe and Dana Coffield and Cahill’s list of what to do in your garden each week. We’ll also entreat you to document your garden and enter your photos in our annual flower photo contest; stay tuned for details.
We’ll surely get our share of unhappy surprises in the garden — you can’t get away from that in Colorado. Consider it the tax on our 300 days of sunshine and the climate that lets us grow amazing things other states’ gardeners can’t dream of.
If the roses — and any more of their kin that I can’t resist — make it into the ground, they’ll bloom in shades of yellow, fuchsia and coral. Best of all, they’ll last for decades — a little reminder that biting off more than you can chew can lead, eventually, to a visual feast.
Here’s to another season of sweat, dirt, blisters and happy surprises. Don’t be a stranger: Come in and tell us about your garden. sclotfelter@denverpost.com or @sclotfelter
