Spring is a lovely season, full of flowers and briskness and things growing. My only beef with spring is that it goes by way too fast. Nascar has nothing on spring. I’ve scarcely had a chance to see that the plum tree in my backyard is budding:

When WHAM!! It is in full flower and starting to drop petals like faux snow.

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Last year at this time, I had fond dreams of growing sweet peas that would climb up the railings of my front porch and fill the air with sweet scents. I would have a chair on the porch, of course, and sit there with a cup of hot lemon tea on warm spring mornings. Everything would be perfect.*

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Sunday was one of those rare sunny winter days in Portland. Birds were chirping, the kids were riding their bikes in circles, and I decided to tackle some front yard clean up.

My house’s former owner had quite a green thumb—come spring my front yard will be a fun mix of vegetables, fruits, ornamental grasses, and perennials. On Sunday morning it was a soggy, overgrown, and under-pruned mess of fallen leaves and barren branches. I looked around and realized it was all up to me now. This yard is mine and I can either take up where the former owner left off or become that yard on the street that everyone whispers about.

So I began to clean up. I cut back perennials, trimmed the grasses, and raked the leaves. I cleaned out the unknown mess that had taken over one of the containers on my porch and made room for the succulents I plan on putting in it. I’m dedicating the next clear weekend day to recreating these this design found in Debra Lee Baldwin’s new book, Succulent Container Gardens.

In the end, I filled an entire compost bin with yard debris and I didn’t even step into the backyard, which is quickly becoming an unappealing jungle. But my front yard is no longer hiding in shame, and I’m actually excited to do some more work.

Growing up, we were considered to be the country mice of the extended family as we lived on a one acre plot about 45 minutes from the “big city.” All of my cousins, aunts, and uncles lived on medium sized suburban city lots, and it was just understood that we lived in the wild, though my family religiously mowed the lawn at least once a week spring through fall.

Our huge expanse of a front yard was mostly lawn, as was our back yard, and even though we had fir, cedar, and fruit trees placed sporadically about, our street was about as suburban as you can get in the middle of the country.

It wasn’t until I moved to a small suburban apartment complex with an almost perfectly manicured lawn and grounds that I began to realize the similarities between the two places and started wondering what truly is wild.

In comes William Robinson — with Rick Darke — and The Wild Garden. William Robinson pioneered the naturalistic gardening style in Britain (home of the perfectly manicured lawn and sculpted boxwoods), and his style continues to influence gardeners across the globe today.

Timber author Rick Darke updated Robinson’s classic with gorgeous new photography, and some introductory chapters, and he has recently written an article for The American Gardener magazine that describes exactly “What is Wild?” (Link goes to a PDF.)

William Robinson and Rick Darke have shown me that you don’t have to live in the country to have a naturalistic, “wild” space.

This year, it seems mandatory for any lifestyle article to include tips on “how to save money.” The gardening industry is no exception, and one of the things that people tout to save money is starting your ornamental plants from seed. Most articles claim that it is “cheap and easy”. I won’t argue with “cheap”, but I’m beginning to add a big mental asterisk to “easy”. As in: “Starting things from seed is cheap and easy”*

*As long as you have exactly the right spot, sow the seeds exactly the right way, and don’t mind re-sowing three or four times. Oh, and those lovely pictures of fields of waving flowers on seed packets? Sometimes seed packets lie. (I know! There should be a law!)

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This guest post was written by Pam Baggett, author of Tropicalismo.

Friends asked me the other day why I looked so happy. I spun around, leapt up in the air and did a double cartwheel-backflip, shouting DEER FENCE!!! These guys know me pretty well and are prone to forgive and even encourage my embarrassing public excesses, so they jubilantly sang deer fence, deer fence with me as we linked arms and skipped down the street.

Okay, I’m exaggerating.

But not much. Any gardener who’s had her sacred plot ravaged by deer knows what a ten-foot tall fence means. Peace, sanity, preservation of a way of life. Not to mention tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, okra, and green beans–all homegrown like they’re s’posed to be. Are you surprised I fenced the veggies first? A gardener’s got to eat well to do her best work, right?

I did slip a few flowers into our 16×16 space: zinnias, nasturtiums (hey, they’re edible), mammoth sunflowers, climbing hyacinth beans and moon vine. I deliberately did not start adding plants like coleus and elephant ears from my collection of deer-tasty tropicals. That way madness lay, or at least serious overcrowding, which would earn me evil looks and loud complaints from my fence-building partner. Those plants will just have to enjoy one more summer in containers. Luckily, deer leave lots of tropicals untouched, so I can still grow cannas, bananas, lantanas, ginger lilies, salvias, and funky-smelling plectranthus unprotected.

Now that we have fresh pesto and tomato sandwiches covered, my partner and I can concentrate on fencing the rest of the garden. Next time my friends see me, I may just be somersaulting over a star!

Dear Viburnum,

I’m sorry that I pruned you almost down to the ground last weekend.

I really enjoyed having you in my backyard. You had lovely flowers and foliage, and you gave the sparrows somewhere to sit while they chattered away about whatever sparrows chatter about. You were grand. Except – you were a little too big. You loomed over my kale, making it lean waaaay over to the side in an attempt to get at the sun. So I thought I would prune you down, and have the best of both worlds – a lovely Viburnum, and a lovely patch of straight-up-and-down kale.

I may have put too much trust in the phrase “Viburnums are forgiving of pruning.”

You are now very, very short, and bereft of leaves. I feel like a murderer – or at least an overconfident and foolish gardener. I really, really hope that you come back. I am even prepared to break my “no watering the ornamentals” rule and provide you with some water over the summer, so you have some sustenance during your long convalescence. Or at least, I hope it is convalescence, and not a death rattle.

After I was done pruning, I got an excellent view of the sparrows sunning themselves on the neighbor’s garage, which was previously blocked by your foliage. The looked like little pats of butter, softening down onto the roof in the sun. But I’m sure they are plotting vengeance.

I hope you make it. I’ll deliver your first bonus serving of water tonight.

A number of gardens in Portland feature Semperviviums, or “Hens and Chicks”. They do really well here, growing up rock walls and covering swaths of vertical landscaping. I’ve always really liked them, and wanted them in my own garden.

My neighbors down the street have some lovely examples.

The problem, for me, is that since there are so many of these things everywhere, I’ve always felt like I shouldn’t bother to buy a Sempervivium – surely one will appear in my path one of these days! I admire my neighbor’s plants whenever I walk by, but I’ve never screwed up the courage to knock on their door and ask them if they would mind if I took a “chick” home with me.

I was just mentioning this to a friend yesterday. Then, as I walked along the sidewalk towards home – there it was! A little Sempervivium, orphaned, right in my path!

I hope it makes lots and lots of babies.

Other than vegetables, I subscribe to the “if it needs extra water, it doesn’t deserve to live” theory, which means that a lot of the ornamental that were in my front yard when I bought my house didn’t make it through their first year with me. It’s like the Marines, I like to tell myself: “the few, the proud – the ones who can do without water for four months.” A co-worker of mine says “I don’t kill plants – I just watch them die,” and I find that distinction very comforting when I think about the fate of those dearly departed perennials. (I don’t even know their names. I’m a monster.)

In the empty spots that somehow keep popping up in my front yard, I plan to plant things that are tough ‘n hardy, purty, impervious to neglect, and will give the crab grass a run for its money. Native plants are excellent for this sort of application – many of them are adapted to where I live anyway, so won’t require much care once established. Plus, they have the added bonus of providing food for local wildlife. One of our books, 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants is also an excellent source of plants that require minimal care – every single plant in there is of the “plant it and forget it” variety. (Or, rather, “plant it and forget it, except when you are noticing how attractive it is.”) Thirdly, there is a book that we’ll publish at the end of the year that sounds right up my alley – The New Low-Maintenance Garden, by Valerie Easton. The parts of the book that I have seen are gorgeous and chock full of all kinds of beautiful, low-maintenance gardens, any one of which I would be happy to find serendipitously plopped down in front of my house. This book will go on my Christmas list.

I love a beautiful garden, but I have trouble keeping up with 4 raised beds of vegetables, and that’s only about 120 square feet. So I am always pleased to find books that recommend plants and techniques for fuss-free garden beauty. Maybe someday I’ll have a full-fledged, 40-hour-a-week garden – but I’m not aiming to have one of those anytime soon.

Last night I went to a talk given by Dan Hinkley, plant explorer extraordinaire. He has the enviable job of traveling around the world (I know) and hunting down new plants species and cultivars (I know!) to introduce to the gardeners of North America.

He described the process that he goes through to collect the seeds, clean them, and bring them to the US to be grown and tested before being introduced to the public at large. I learned, among other things, that seeds can take up to four years to sprout! (At the three year mark, one should begin warning the seeds that if they don’t shape up and sprout soon, it’s the compost pile for them.) This was a “duh” moment once it was explained to me – if all the seeds sprouted at once, and there was a drought, or, say, a very hungry caterpillar, that particular species of plant might not have survived for long. Staggering the germination rate gives the seeds multiple chances to take over the world. Seeds win!

I also wondered about the reasons for choosing a particular plant to bring back for testing. After all, when one is hiking in the wilds of (insert any country – he’s probably been there), there are doubtless many trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, EVERYTHING, all vying for attention. Dan said that he is typically drawn to plants that have interesting foliage, since flowers are fleeting, and he is often traveling in the fall. Other plant explorers may go for textured bark, or flowers, or plants that only grow upside down, but he likes foliage.

And the last lesson – if you are buying a house, and it is named “Windcliff”, don’t assume that it is just a quaint, lovely name. Assume that it means that your house is perched on a cliff and that it will be constantly buffeted by huge gusts of wind, and plan accordingly.