Slow Gardening with the help of a Holding Garden

The garden in this picture doesn’t look like much but it’s saved my butt more times than I can count.  It’s just a humble holding or nursery garden, and here’s what it’s done for me lately.

Check out the photo on the right - the newly created seating area for my adirondack chairs, shown two posts ago.  The project involved first creating and then leveling space for the chairs and the new umbrella, and before it could even be started I had to move all the plants that were in the way -  a large old azalea, about 10 large astilbe and several clumps of periwinkle.  Knowing I wouldn’t be giving them a new home anytime soon, I stuck them here in my holding garden - fully shaded and easy to dig after years of digging and mulching over.  Well watered, they can stay there happily forever, or wait till their new home is ready.  We’re in the midst of a killer drought, you know.  And last spring the holding garden held 6 shrubs and small trees while I was rearranging a large common border.

In this case most of the plants found their new homes 3 weeks later, an interval that allowed me to slow down and do the project right, goddammit.  Otherwise I’d have rushed and surely been unhappy with the results.  Regrading was involved and it takes time to let the grade settle by getting rained on or at least watered in.  It takes time to sit in the chairs at different times of the day and make sure their placement is correct in relation to the umbrella.  It takes time just to look at something new over a few days to decide if I really like it the way it is or if more fiddling is needed.

But it’s also clear that especially here in this large, stressed-out urban area, slowing down is a good thing, as our Martha would say.  Slow gardening is what we gardeners do and it’s way more more enjoyable than the fast gardening performed by professionals, of necessity.  Sometimes the results even look better.

If you don’t have a shady area that could be used as a holding or nursery garden, maybe a neighbor does.  And couldn’t even a container that’s placed in the shade and watched carefully work in most cases?  I’m trying to take away your excuses.