Geeky Gardening: Welcome to My Gardens!

Welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be a fun series of posts involving…you guessed it! Geeky gardening. Why geeky? I mean, don’t old ladies and homebodies garden? That doesn’t quite follow what might be most people’s mental image of “gardening.”

I suppose it all depends on the mindset. Like most things, context is key. As has been discussed elsewhere, there is more to geekery than comics or video games or Dungeons & Dragons. You don’t have to be into tech. You just have to be into something. I’ve know people who loved jewelry or rocks or theater or art who are every bit as geeked out about that thing as I am about board games and fantasy novels and Hello Kitty. So, gardening.

Ever since I moved into my very own house, gardening has been important to me. In fact, I picked this house especially because it had so many possibilities in the tiny yard. I’ve fit gardens into every nook and cranny of this place.

Why does gardening get my geek on? Well, it’s related to my love of fantasy. I’ve always associated nature with fantasy, I’ve always felt really close to the things that I’ve always imagined when I’m in the woods or a garden. Not a weed-killed, overly fertilized, bark-mulched garden, but a natural-ish, native flowery, bird-and-bee attracting garden. It’s easy to imagine that the birds and bees are fairy friends, and that there is always something just out of sight, in the corner of my sight, but never quite “there.”

There is also the science aspect of gardening. What plants grow in the shade versus in the sun? Which plants like each other? Which plants will kill each other? How much water do these need? What animals will they attract? What type of soil would work the best for them?

And then, of course, there is the artistic aspect of things. Should each garden have a theme? Or should things just run wild? What types of stones or statues should go there? What colors should be there?

There are no right or wrong answers to most of these questions. Even the ones that seem obvious, like should this plant be in the sun or shade, have variables. A full sun plant can be in a somewhat shady spot, but might be smaller. A shady plant can go in a sunny spot if you water it enough. The possibilities for gardens are endless, and you can have a garden of any shape or size, even in something as small as a shoe box.

So stay tuned! I’m going to try to post a new article in this series regularly as my gardens progress through the seasons and as I “finish” each one over the summer. Next up: Gnomes!