Coming from an extremely long line of farmers I've inherited a serious ability to grow things. I've created quite a few amazing gardens, for myself and others.
My favorite was the restoration of a garden behind the original carriage house of an old Salt Lake City mansion on the corner of S Street and South Temple. According to the client's insistence, I divided his back yard in half (about 1/2 acre), turning the north side into a cutting garden and planting the south side into a long green space planted with "English-style" perennial beds on both sides with a small formal fountain hidden at the far end. I tidied up the front of the old carriage house by removing the lawn and reinventing the original curved driveway with a couple of tons of crushed used brick and outlined the driveway in privet. The south entrance to the building had been a rose garden which, with a little archeology I was able to mostly recover. Every spring the south garden turned into giant cascades of pink, white and lavender climbing bourbon roses that are no longer cultivated. In the summer, when those old roses faded from the heat, masses of long honeysuckle boughs shocked the eye and filled the small area with a thick, heavy floral scent. And once the honeysuckle faded the many varieties of clematis I had planted shot through covering everything with blossoms. The most amazing were three white, miniature-flower clematis that gave off a strong scent of vanilla -- day and night until the first frost. I think the original owners who sold their mansion and moved into the upstairs of the old carriage house to live out the reset of their lives would have approved. My client certainly approved. And I was always having to dig up and change the arrangement of plants he would stick in his cutting garden. He had a bad habit of forgetting that cutting gardens are the gardens where one plants flowers and vegetable in rows, not aesthetically pleasing mixed clumps.
Sadly, nothing lasts forever. The garden didn't require a huge investment in time and maintenance, it just required an experienced gardner to keep it at bay. My client hired and trained a young man to take care of him and the garden. That lasted for about 12 years until my client died. I heard that when the property was sold his "hired" boy went under the knife and had a complete sex change. I trespassed onto the property several years ago, about three years after his death. The minimalist lawn had escaped and taken over everything. The grass was knee-high and turning brown from lack of water. And the ancient bourbon roses were mostly dead from borers.
I cut scions of all of the roses and packed them in my carry-on luggage back to Spain where -- after some careful coaxing in cold frames and a lot of rootone, they all are doing quite well covering up the ancient back yard stone walls. They are a great reminder of my old friend and client.
I mention this "creation" because today, the first day of the year, I've been marking off the plants and trees of an old estancia I bought myself as a Solstice present. There's an enormous, self-standing bougainvilea outside what will eventually be my bedroom window. in Spanish it's known as Santa Rita. I prefer to call it bougainvillea. And it's an old, original uncultivated variety. As with most things uncultivated, the color of the bracts is intense and it's relatively pest free. In my world, you have to garden in order to live. Plus, despite a serious termite problem with the main building, there is a natural pond about a quarter meter from the screened in house with an explosion of self-seeded palms at one end that are home to a large flock of native red-crested parrots. I might as well take advantage of the dirt and create a large, personal botanical garden. Fortunately, during the winter months it rains enough I don't have to worry about watering.
