I had a very dear friend, Mary, who has since passed away. She was a chemist but her real love was botany. The reason I write about her here involves the way she influenced me.
Mary was definitely eccentric. She made it her mission to become acquainted with the people in the neighborhood who had gardens she liked. She would show up, peruse these gardens to view the plants or harvest seeds, whether the owners were home or not. But we all knew Mary would do no harm.
She shared my obsession with plants and she could be downright militant about saving them. She would find asters or some such native wildflower on township roadsides or borders that she felt were being neglected and needed saving. She would rip them out of the ground and show up at my house with a bunch of stalks bearing roots, telling me how special they were.
One time she brought me a handful of scraggly nodding allium cernuum, salvaged from someone’s garbage heap. Mary focused on the needs of bees, birds and butterflies with such caring detail that I longed for an unkempt habitat to help them thrive. She begged me to plant the collected wildflowers in my yard as her own yard, she claimed, was being monitored by the township, and she dare not plant anything wild there.
They did give her several warnings to groom her yard. The town had strict rules regarding yard maintenance. Mary would always report to me plant findings in other neighbor’s yards and what condition they were in. One time she ordered Kankakee mallow seeds from the internet to send to her friends in Illinois so they could propagate this endangered native species there.
I have to laugh at myself, now, as I call my small collection of tree saplings in pots, my “tree farm.” I recall how Mary would call the rag-tag collection of seeds from weeds and plants she collected (shown at top), “our seed bank.” They were presented to me in coffee cups with plant names printed on the lids, “Here, these are for our seed-bank,” she’d say. I saved them in an area of the garage I used as my plant/potting shed.
Mary’s other special love was the end-of-season close out sales at the big box stores. She would buy a flat of bedraggled annuals and pop a couple out for me. She would report all the plants on sale that I either liked or was searching for. But I had never shopped for plants like this before. Here I am, standing in my yard staring at a handful of unpotted annuals bearing sorry roots. If I didn’t kill them outright, I was grateful for her generosity.
Her crazy excitement over close-out plant sales actually caught on with me. I began looking at the neglected area in the garden center. These plants were often behind in growth, having been crippled in a container over the last three months. They were passed over by fussy customers who needed perfection. They suffered from inconsistent watering and the roots had long ago eaten up any remaining soil. These poor rejected orphans were slated for the compost heap. I would look to see signs of latent growth under dead leaves and stalks that needed pruning. I would make sure there weren’t any hitchhikers of disease or insects that would jeopardize my plants. They usually bounced back with extra attention and care. Sometimes, the one they left behind became a star performer in the garden.
I marvel at the way horticultural practices have produced cultivars that are grown to endure the torture of heat, drought, cold, and sheer neglect. When they do thrive, their resilience brings us that special joy we all work so hard to achieve in our garden. I also marvel at the way Mary’s collected wildflower seeds, from God knows where, actually made their appearance in my yard after sowing and forgetting. We should all be grateful for the tenancy of nature, so absolutely certain, ever persistent, in the face of today’s world of uncertainty.