More

by Lee C. Neff

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.

Yogi Berra

Packing up every dish and book and plant that can be justified, to move two and a half miles, might seem wise if the move were prompted by some sort of exalted purpose: saving the planet or being able to walk to work, for instance. But when such a move is prompted by the mere notion of having more , one must work earnestly to explain such extravagance.

There might even be some sorts of “more” that could be stated without embarrassment: “ We needed more quiet in our lives.” “John wanted to bike even more miles to work.” “The move gave us the opportunity to spend more time together.” “We were trying to figure out how to pay more in property tax—the city deserves it so!”

But the truth, more or less, is that I just wanted more land to garden. Our visible, corner lot didn't seem to be the right place for tomato cages and pea trellises. A new rockery would have been a really public affair. We didn't own any truly big trees. And my talent for coveting was well developed. So, finally, we packed every dish and book and plant that could be justified and moved from a respectable city lot in The Mt. Baker part of Seattle to three-quarters of an acre of old holly and fruit farm in Seward Park. And I have just what I wished for: more land to garden.

Yogi Berra is right. Here I am. Not having known exactly where I was going, I am now determined to get there! I definitely have more land to garden, but the journey has just begun: gardening here is a kind of pilgrimage. From the acquisitive present the journey moves both backward and forward in time, for it is impossible to plant the twigs and trees of the present and future without running smack into the trunks of the past. Three-fourths of an acre seems like a lot of land for trees, but it is easy to wander around for weeks, toting gallon size treasures, such as Embothrium “Inca Flame,” Stewartia rostrata , or Magnolia Watsoni,” unsure of how their ultimate height will be affected by the shadows cast by the already mature Deodar cedars and Himalayan white pine, or the merely adolescent Sequoia.

Shortly after we moved to this garden, the inaugural day windstorm mercifully uprooted several decisions made by earlier gardeners. A morose Norway spruce was blown down, and its uprooting took along a feeble laburnum and a two-story boxwood. A blessed mess—and three years of firewood! But with time and the help of knowledgeable gardening friends, we found and planted in their places a sturdy Sciadopitys verticillata , a Styrax obassia , and an elegant Stewartia monodelpha . They seem to be welcome here, good additions to this community of plants and people.

But taking advantage of tragedy seems an almost too easy way to satisfy one's lust for more. Harder was the decision to cut down the gnarled and hobbling mountain ash, the merely gawky weeping Euonymus , or the huge, drooping, sickly blue spruce in order to make way for younger and newer treasures. After all, every one of those ancient trunks was once a twiggy seedling, carefully planted by someone else who loved to garden. Finding room for more requires either making do with less of it, or doing away with more of the past.

Yogi Berra probably knew that most folks who don't know where they are going plan to get there somehow anyway. And so we have continued down the ill-lit path, cautiously deciding which steps to take. Some haven't been so difficult. The hundred-year-old big leaf maple, sixty-year-old Himalayan white pine and Camper-down elm were priorities from the start. When the moving van rolled into the driveway, it rolled over the roots of the pine and elm which were noosed by black asphalt. Thus, one of our early goals was to free them from the death sentence and to provide them with more genial company. Happily, a new, smaller gravel drive also gave us room for a rock garden and a fetching wattle trellis.

So, one way or another, the past has been honored and changes have been made. But getting to where we are going is an altogether different matter, for we have yet to take the time to map our destination. What sort of garden do we hope to find when we have completed this journey? It might include a beautiful, Rosemary Verey sort of vegetable garden, complete with wattle fencing. More fruit trees and herbs. Some serious study and understanding of what to plant in the rockery. A patio full of pots and a hefty trellis. A collection of dry shade plants with which to comfort the roots of the white pine. A potting shed. Places for lots of clematis vines, tree peonies, and hybrid musk roses. And the unfashionable (to the unenlightened) but absolutely necessary colors—orange, salmon, bronze and black. In short, more and more and more. My mother would sigh and say, “too much muchness.”

“Too much muchness” is a far cry from a soul-satisfying more . So before we stumble into a genuine mid-pilgrimage crisis, we need to reflect on some other useful sorts of more: more time to be in the garden and to be a gardener; more awareness of how we and our home live in this garden; more understanding of the relationships among this community of plants; more understanding of the genealogy of the property and the gifts others have given to it. More thankfulness for the blessing of gardening here. Much, much more….