THE AGING GARDENER; 'I GROW OLD... I GROW OLD... I SHALL WEAR THE BOTTOMS OF MY (GARDENING) TROUSERS ROLLED.'

Growing old. It's as inevitable as death and taxes and late spring freezes. And yet, while our bodies are constantly delivering the bad news that we are aging, demonstrating this with aching knees and backs, overactive bladders, failing eyesight and diminishing strength, our minds are locked into a very different calendar. 

In our minds, we are always young and capable, envisioning a future in which we will set goals and achieve them. This paradox of human existence (Shakespeare wrote: "Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty") makes us a strangely conflicted species, perhaps even a pitiful one. I confess to being as conflicted as any old sod, but I feel as if I may be gaining wisdom about this stage of life, at last.

This wisdom wasn't purchased without pain, and I mean REAL pain. The scream-inducing, white-knuckling, how-did-this-happen kind. It began innocently enough, as many major watersheds of self-awareness have commenced in my life, with a couple of hours in the spring garden. This took place two years ago on the eve of a trip my husband and I were due to make. My daughter and her husband, C. T., had rented a lakeside cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains and had invited F. K. and I, along with C. T.'s mother, to join them for a couple of idyllic spring days at high elevation. I'd finished most of my packing, had prepped for the petsitter, and was trying to catch up on the weeding in my sprawling backyard patch before the sun went down.

In the shade of a giant pecan tree at the edge of our property is a bed of shade-loving perennials, growing in the lee of a retaining wall. In order to tend the plants growing there, it's necessary to step up on the lowest part of the wall where it meets the slope before stepping down into the bed. I'd done this maneuver a thousand times, but on this particular evening, when I braced my hands on my right knee in order to pull my left leg up on to the wall, I felt (and swear I heard) a tiny tearing, like an envelope being ripped in two. No problem: my legs and hips still functioned. I went on weeding before returning to the house and then to bed.

Offending step on the retaining wall

In the morning, waking early for the drive to Highlands, I tried to pull the covers off and raise myself from the pillow. The pain that shot down my spine was almost indescribable. It felt as if my back had been broken where it joined the pelvis, and the severed ends of bone and nerves were scraping against one another. Just raising my torso from the mattress was so painful as to be impossible; I remember being amazed by the fact that I was literally weeping with pain as my husband tried to lift me into a sitting position. At some point he sent a message to my daughter who was already in the mountains. She must have sent word to her husband to make a detour in his own car, because I was still in bed, sobbing and screaming, when C. T. and his mother appeared at my bedside, wondering how they could help.

We live in a rural area where emergency medicine is mostly in an aspirational stage, so getting to a doctor on the weekend was out of the question and so was riding forty miles in a car to the nearest modern hospital. I don't know how we made the transition from profound disability to minimum functionality, but at some point a bottle of serious painkillers was produced. Once I'd swallowed a pill and waited for twenty minutes, I found that I could think coherently for the first time since waking that morning, and I recalled the back brace I'd purchased online during the pandemic. F. K. dug it out of a drawer for me, and once Class 4 drugs had made it possible for me to stand in the shower briefly and then dress, I was wrapped in the brace with all the Velcro tabs and latching straps restricting unnecessary movement. 

CT, JT, SR (wearing brace), LB, FK & Clark

How did I survive the weekend? I'm still not sure, but with such good company it was easier than I had hoped; I even managed a boat trip around the lake at low speed. Round-the-clock ibuprofen to tackle inflammation and pain meds every eight hours made it possible. I was able to get an appointment with my regular G. P. early in the following week: he took x-rays, found nothing alarming, and diagnosed 'musculo-skeletal strain.' I was in physical therapy for weeks, getting acupuncture treatments and learning to strengthen my "core." What I learned from that experience was that I could no longer perform the physical labor gardening had required of me in my forties, nor even in my fifties. My aging body is one that must accommodate limitations of strength and endurance at a time when the garden offers more solace for my world-weary spirit than it has ever done. I need it more as I age, but I must be vigilant that it not need too much from me. I have only to look at my medical bills from that time to be reminded of this important rule. 

The lake in Highlands: worth the struggle

How, then, are we meant to garden in old age? In case you haven't noticed, trained gardeners who can be hired for the day are a thing of the past, even for those gardeners who can pay well; they went out with the days of fountain pens and Tupperware. You might be able to find a young man with a chainsaw (YMWC) who will take down small trees for you or cut back brush, but odds are he will know nothing about the finer points of pruning. The YMWC will consider your instructions to break up the Carolina clay in true chain-gang style, swinging a pickaxe or mattock rather than using a tiller (which has about as much effect on unimproved clay as a plastic spoon on a rib-eye steak) too preposterous to take seriously. The man has a point: I have inflicted years of brutal punishment on my 'musculo-skeletal structure' by breaking up red clay with hand tools. I have compounded the damage by loading, unloading and stacking river stones to build walls, by teetering on ladders to tie in rose canes, by hauling heavy pots to the basement as winter approaches, and by hauling them out again when spring arrives.

My mattock

I finally gave a hard "NO" to ladders after an incident three years ago. I grow the white Lady Banks rose, Rosa banksiae 'Alba,' on a pergola in my lower garden. After fifteen years the trunk is as large as a mature crepe myrtle and the same warm cinnamon color: I cannot be parted from it despite the fact that the pearly blossoms are often blasted by late freezes while still in bud stage, and despite its prodigious rate of growth. It must be pruned annually or it would soon smother every other plant growing in that part of the garden, which is why I was standing on a tall painter's ladder on that February day, balancing my pruning saw and Felco shears while trying to tame the monster. When I garden I typically wear a small backpack which contains my phone and a bottle of water, and I was wearing it that day when the ladder suddenly shifted under my feet, falling backwards with me clinging to it.

For what seemed like a long time I could not breathe. But I could feel, eventually, that my feet and hands were working, so realized with relief that I wasn't paralyzed. I credit the backpack for cushioning my spine, but at the time, I could not seem to get off the lawn. Managing to reach into the pack and extract my phone, I texted my husband, who was on his computer indoors, saying merely: "Fallen in garden. Please help."

I waited, but he did not appear at the back door. After a few more minutes, when my lungs began to function more normally, I was able to roll over, prop myself up with my hands, and by clutching a garden chair, pull myself on to my feet. Pushing the ladder out of the way, I went back to work on the rose, clipping only the canes I could reach. Twenty minutes later, as I was returning the tools to the shed, F. K. rushed out of the house. "What happened?"

Pointing to the ladder on the ground, I vowed silently never to take the damn thing out again. The older you get, I told myself, the fewer accidents you are allowed. And the more likely no one is coming to save you.

The white Lady Banks in bloom.

That is why one of my key rules about gardening in old age has become:

Plant no more big or unwieldy things. No more galloping ramblers or vines, like the homicidal Lady Banks, or like English ivy (I rue the day...) or like the crossvine I planted to cover a chain link fence. It's not so fond of the fence, but the vine has nearly swallowed the south-facing side of my house. 

More tips I've taken to heart:

Plant nothing that requires near-constant cutting back (see English ivy). This is especially important if the plant specializes in thorns.

Plant nothing that is susceptible to pests or diseases, since hoiking a dying plant out of the garden can be as strenuous as setting a new one in place. Also, bookmark your local extension's website in order to keep up on new infestations affecting your area. This is how I found out about boxwood blight when it first made its way into the Carolinas after decimating historic gardens in Britain. Calonectria pseudonaviculata turns the leaves of boxwoods brown and eventually denudes the shrubs. Clemson Extension advises getting rid of any afflicted plants, but I happen to have two six-foot-tall Buxus 'Green Mountain' trees that I've tended for a decade as well as a mound-shaped Buxus microphylla grown from a cutting out of the garden of Elizabeth Lawrence, the fabled Charlotte horticulturist. None of those boxwoods could be replaced for less than hundreds of dollars. Hoik them out? Not on your life.

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  B. microphylla and B.'Green Mountain'

And how would I accomplish that? I've still got a row of eight-foot-tall arborvitaes whose rootballs were pushed over at a 45 degree angle by Hurricane Helene last fall; for six months I've been searching fruitlessly for some YMWC willing to extract them without tearing out the rest of the garden. So 'no' to getting rid of the boxwoods. I spray them twice a year with Bonide Fung-onil, which helps retard the fungus, and I always clean my shears with bleach after trimming, but there is currently no cure for this disease. It turns out that I possess one resistant species of boxwood: Buxus harlandii 'Richard,' and my specimen is hale and hearty at the moment. However, if I'd known when I built this garden what I know now about blight, I would have passed on boxwoods entirely. Learn from my heartbreak!

Cut out anything delicate, fussy, or exceptionally time-consuming. With apologies to Monty Don, I finally stopped lifting dahlia tubers and storing them in boxes in the basement to overwinter. We do get cold temperatures in this part of the upstate in January and February, but after comparing growth and bloom on the stored dahlias with those I left in the ground, well-mulched, I couldn't detect any difference.

Don't waste too much time or money on annuals. As the word implies, they must be planted every year, so you're making more work for yourself. Instead, plant perennials that produce similar effects. For instance, I grow species tulips, leaving the hybrid ones for people who have more time (and $$) on their hands. Species tulips that come back reliably every spring in my garden (and also spread on their own) are Tulipa clusiana 'Cynthia' and Tulipa clusiana 'Lady Jane.' Over time, I've come to prefer the delicate, natural look of these blooms to hybrid tulips.

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  Lady Jane species tulips

The aging gardener is permitted occasionally to add a new plant to the garden, but she must not build new beds. (See previous references to pickaxing.) Your gardening motto at this stage in your life may as well be: You've made your beds. Now lie in them.

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I sensed a kindred mode of thinking when I read a Facebook post from a gardener I know, Deborah Moore Clark. In March of this year she posted about a combination Open Garden/Downsizing Sale she was holding in her backyard, writing: "The downsizing continues. I'm focused. My head is down. I'm determined to get this done!" While she and her husband have no immediate plans to move out of their spacious home in South Charlotte NC, Deborah is looking ahead, and expects them to be relocating to a retirement community in the not-so-distant future. With that plan in mind, she invited fellow gardeners over to see the show of late-winter blooms and to consider buying her garden furniture, pots, tools, gardening books and garden art. Over the course of three days, each guest was scheduled for a private appointment to shop (Deborah explains: "I don't multi-task well anymore, so it was easier this way than having everyone over all at once"). 

Deborah Moore Clark in R. I.

She cleared out a good portion of her inventory, including her hand tools and pots. Won't she need them if she downsizes, I ask? I volunteered with Deborah for several years at our county's Master Gardener program, writing articles for the Extension Newsletter that Deborah produced and edited. I know this woman to be extremely skilled and knowledgeable. On a balcony or patio, I assume she will still want to garden, albeit on a smaller scale, once she's moved into assisted living. But she is adamant that she will be hanging up her trowel for good. "I'm tired," Deborah confesses. "I used to work in my garden for hours, come inside for a peanut butter sandwich, and then pop back out. But not anymore. My back starts to  hurt. I don't have the stamina."

I find this highly relatable, along with Deborah's insistence that she doesn't plan to garden in containers once she and her husband have moved, because pots require too much watering "and it doesn't feel like real gardening to me." 

D. M. C.s yellow Lady Banks rose in bloom

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My maternal grandmother was born on a farm in Germany within spitting distance of the North Sea. Her entire family immigrated to America in 1892, settling in San Francisco. She and her siblings grew up there, surviving the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, marrying and settling down in the suburbs. But when Evie divorced my grandfather, she moved back into the old Victorian her parents owned in the Mission District, raising her three children there and taking over the backyard garden her mother had tended for years. When my mother was introduced to Eva after becoming engaged to my father, Eva's youngest son, she found her eccentric. Mary Jane never did warm to her, and I find this ironic when I consider how much I have grown to resemble my grossmutter in her love of books and learning, her fondness for "Kaffe und Kuchen" and especially in her passion for gardening.

 

Eva Graf (my grandmother, standing) and her sister Carla,
shortly before the 1906 earthquake.

My midwestern mother liked to tell the story of the first time she was invited to dinner at the big, drafty house on the corner of 23rd Street and Bartlett, of how bizarre it seemed to her that when the meal was finished, her future mother-in-law took a fresh tablecloth from the cupboard and spread it over the dirty dishes on the table, concealing them from sight. Then she walked into the garden and commenced puttering with her plants in the hour of daylight that remained. 

"How crazy is that?" my mother would ask every time she told this story, but from my point of view it never sounded crazy. And now that I'm older than my grandmother was when she cooked dinner for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, it's clear to me that Eva had her priorities straight.

This brings me to my last tip for the aging gardener: if you want to ignore everything I've recommended here, feel free. You're old! Yes, most of us have responsibilities at this age and are unable to do whatever we want whenever we choose. But having lived longer than most people on the planet, we have earned the right to a few simple pleasures. Give yourself permission to leave the dirty dishes for later and step into the garden you love, preferably with a gin and tonic in hand. Just don't get on a ladder, and leave the pickaxe in the shed. "The hardest thing to give up," Deborah tells me, "will be my garden swing."

I think of that as I swing in mine today: sweaty, disheveled, my right hand throbbing after chopping weeds for an hour. Living my best life, in other words. For as long as it lasts. 

The view from my swing.

This text is solely the property of the author. No portion may be copied, edited or reprinted without the express written permission of the author. Excepting those photos loaned by Deborah Moore Clark, the photos used in this post are solely the property of the author and may not be copied, edited or reprinted without the express written permission of the author.

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