Style Scout: Full Flower

Cy finally embraces his inner wild (garden) child.

Katherine Aby in her sun-drenched Edina garden.

Image credit: Photo by Tate Carlson

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By: Cy Winship |   May 2011   |  From the print edition

I try to remember that life is short and that we should embrace all the joy we can. I try not to find misery where there’s none present. But then there’s my garden. Every winter I start obsessing about crafting the perfect garden. I’m ruthless, and will completely re-imagine everything. The pond will be rebuilt. I will rip out those roses that barely bloom, and everything else that bugs me. Big grasses are my vision one year, boxwoods another. And then there’s the evil recurring dream of the perfectly controlled Japanese garden.

And, like every year, you could say I’m undone by delphiniums. Or new roses. Or lilies or sweetpeas or whatever captures my imagination at the garden center.

As with so many things, I can blame (or thank) my mother. When I was little, she gave me a corner of her garden to plant. What little gay boy wouldn’t love growing sky-blue delphiniums, right? I was nicknamed Ferdinand for the flower-sniffing bull in the children’s book. You see, I love flowers. I love buying them, watching them grow and staring at their blooms. The problem is, I’m a designer and I have no control or discipline with flowers. And I keep thinking I should.

So I agonize every year that I don’t have a sculpted, impressive modernist garden to awe and impress people. I suck the joy out of it all. It’s odd, because my design style is actually pretty florid and humorous and over the top. Why do I think my gardens have to look “designed”? I mean, I’ve always known that the act of getting my hands in the earth comprised my most spiritual moments. I know the process is more important than the outcome. But I manage to taint the whole thing with anxiety and disappointment. It shouldn’t be so messy, so spotty—if I was smartercoolerbetter I would have the most awesome designer’s garden ever. But I’m not—I’m a failure (ironically, my mother’s mantra).

Good God, what have I done? An epiphany finally hit. Yes, we can design our homes however we like—in any style, and redo it over an over, but a garden is not a room. I can’t believe I didn’t see this long ago: A garden should be a source of joy. Period. It defies all but the most basic design efforts. And you know what? I love that. I’m relieved by it. In the end, it’s gonna do what it wants to do.

And now I see that when I visit a home, and the gardens are too perfect (like when they hired someone else to do them), I get kind of creeped out. I adore people that drag me out to see what they’ve done—because then we connect. Truth is, I don’t really trust people who don’t like to garden. The impulse is childlike and dear and corny and wonderful.

So to hell with design. Let plants fail or flourish. I am, finally, just going to love the messy exuberance of it all. I’ll plant with the naivete of a child and watch in wonder as the first poppies open.

Then I will go in and repaint the living room—because that orange was all wrong in the first place.