Garden bears fruits of friendships

It’s one thing to order a garden: a line of rugosa roses for a hedge between a driveway and a public lawn; a carefully spaced planting of bushes that will flower at various times of the summer; a row of blue spruce trees to define the plot. Add a few perennials and a couple of benches, and a community garden takes shape: one many people will enjoy over the years, if vicariously.

It’s a whole different scenario to develop – with many years but few dollars – a private garden where private remembrances are as beautiful as the gardens themselves.

Ours started with Polly Brown, who offered a clump of green from her prolific forsythia that stood in front of lattice in her yard. That was in the summer of 1978, when the only thing rising out of the rocky soil was the new well casing, complete with a layer of powdered granite.

Not long afterward, a friend by the name of Bill Curtis drove over one day with a burning bush in his trunk and a handkerchief full of jonquil bulbs. “Thought you might like these,” he said, proudly showing me his catalog order.

Mrs. Brown’s “yellow bell” (as my mama called it) is as tall as Mr. Curtis’ burning bush is fat – about 8 feet, and I think of them often while pruning or fertilizing or snipping branches from their bushes for inside vases.

The crab-apple tree by the mudroom door was a long-ago gift from Red and Charlotte, the astilbe from Phil, the phlox from Jean, the irises from Martha and Earl, others from Rod, the snow-on-the-mountain from Jack, the candytuft from Johnnie, the hydrangea from Sally, the glads from Diana.

Each plant has a name, not necessarily the botanical name only purist gardeners cite, but people names I know – or knew – well.

Take, for instance, the lupine dug up years ago from Leona’s back yard. That’s Leona’s lupine. Those are Marie’s roses.

There are violets imported from Ruth’s, foxglove from David, delphinium from Jeannie’s, lilies from Gale’s, feverfew from Priscilla’s, hosta from Roland (via Diana), and monkshood shared from the old Rand place.

Just about every bush or plant has a story – and a memory in my heart.

The huge spirea once graced the entry to the first hardware store, now turned bistro. The ferns were transported from way down the dirt road, the daisies from the dump, the lilacs from a field near an abandoned house.

There are Vicki’s white flowers, Judy’s lavender ones, Cindy’s blue ones, Jay’s tall ones, Betsy’s tiny bluets, Adelaide’s pinks, Jane’s bulbs, Hale’s black-eyed Susans.

The poet Mildred Howells once asked, “Oh, tell me how my garden grows … .”

And to that, I would answer: “It’s a friendly garden; it grows from friends.”