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Going Big: Graduating to a Major Garden
One writer went from tending a little patch of green to multiple acres. Learn from her hard-won lessons.
By: Stacy Morrison
When I got the call that my delivery was on the way, I threw on my wellies and raced outside to wait for the truck loaded with fresh compost. I had recently moved from a house on a shady quarter-acre, where I grew my vegetables on the back deck, to a couple of upstate New York acres drenched in full sun. Ready to install the gardens of my dreams, I stood outside, grinning in anticipation, feeling very much like a Very Serious Gardener™ at last as the truck lumbered my way.
But trust me, there’s a serious learning curve to scaling up, and my trajectory had just begun. I knew I had to stop making multiple runs to the nursery for soil, filling my van with 20 bags a pop. When I placed my compost order, though, I felt like a poseur, playing dress-up and stumbling around in my mother’s high heels. “Oh, I can’t order half a yard? Okay. Oh, it has to be at least two yards for delivery? Umm, sure, yes, let’s do two yards.”
When the truck arrived, I blanched. All that compost couldn’t possibly be for me. Could it? Five minutes later, I was left standing there next to a gigantic pile of compost where we usually park our two cars. I felt a little burning ember of dread in my belly and worried what my husband would say when he got home and saw the compost mountain. What have I done?
I’d fallen for the fantasy of a big garden, in the same way that the dream of a sweet puppy brings sleep deprivation and occasional tears along with the joy.
Turns Out, More is More Than You Think
I had so many gardening dreams wrapped up in my new place. I had endured three years on a shady sliver of land, waiting until my son graduated from high school and I could move, school districts be damned. When the moment arrived, I gleefully found my Hudson Valley property: two flat acres drenched in full sun, just waiting for my attention and care.
For gardens past, I mainly just let myself be seduced by any old thing at the garden center. But with more room to roam, I kept losing the thread, no matter how many Post-it notes I had slapped into plant and seed catalogs. I had effectively graduated from a simple game of checkers to international competitive chess (and I’m no good at chess). So I swapped the time I usually spent on Spelling Bee and other word games and threw that creative energy at… a spreadsheet. Working an Excel table feels like the opposite of communing with the soil and seeing which way vines unfurl as they seek the sun. But it’s a vital budgeting tool and full of need-to-know info: How wide at maturity? Soil preferences? Bloom time? Leaf type and color? Fertilization needs? Pruning habits? I needed to do my best to visualize not just the looks, but the work.
When I planned to plant bearded iris at each of my fenceposts, I mapped out their display in a Gantt-style spreadsheet, with custom-color blocks that matched the color of each iris, and spent six weeks rearranging them before I ordered the rhizomes. This was maddeningly detailed, but the results were gorgeous. On one morning garden walk, I actually teared up at the sheer beauty of droplets of dew glistening on the velvety, plum-dark falls of one iris with a bright-orange beard (called, somewhat irresistibly, Sharp-Dressed Man). I felt like I’d made my very own Giverny.
Now I can’t imagine gardening without my spreadsheets. In the cold, dark days of January and February, I fire up my computer and start my seedlings/transplanting/planting calendar, smiling into the warm, yellow glow of my computer screen as if it were the sun itself.
Set Your Ego Aside
I’m the kind of gardener who always prided myself on doing everything by hand: relocating thorny rose bushes, you name it. But when it came time to create some beds at my new place, I spent two exhausting days digging up the reality of my soil (construction gravel, dense clay deposits, innumerable large rocks). I was defeated, dispirited, and accepted that it was time to outsource. I called in a guy with an excavator to dig up the soil, screen out rocks and gravel, mix in my heaps of compost, and give me gardens. I have conveniently blocked from memory what it cost. I consoled myself by murmuring under my breath, “Go big, this is your home.” And tried not to think about the other significant investments I knew were ahead: the dozens and dozens of plants I would be tucking into these beautiful beds.
I also had to wave goodbye to the days of hand-watering my gardens, a daily ritual I really loved. If I continued this way on my two acres, I would have had to quit my day job. Part of sizing up is learning to shift your priorities, and sometimes that means sacrificing a known pleasure to make room for new ones.
I read up on irrigation systems: drip versus soaker versus ground sprinklers and so on. Was it as soul-satisfying as picking out my irises? Of course not. But I was pleasantly surprised that installing the irrigation in my vegetable bed was relatively easy (and inexpensive). And it did provide me extra time to drift around the beds and watch every single bud open: a delightful tradeoff, frankly.
Open Yourself to a Major Reset Moment
“It’s never finished” is both the gardener’s inspiration and a warning. And I am continually seduced to add more, simply because I have the space. I put a climbing hydrangea between the oak trees, milkweed along the pond’s edge, and a row of Russian sage against the garage — and then I learned that there is such a thing as “too many gardens.” What you think will take 15 minutes often takes two hours, and even with the best-laid beds.
Now, my goal is to hold steady. I have at last learned to want what I already have: these glorious, beautifully chaotic gardens, that thrive even in the seasons I can’t keep up with them. They pull me outside and into their embrace several times a day, to snatch a few weeds or eat a few raspberries, grounding me in the present moment in a way that brings me an indescribable sense of rightness. The gardens are just big enough to hold all of me, and for me to hold all of them.
My Top Tip: Always Carry a Pen
With a small garden, you can remember what you put into the ground. No such luck when you go big! I once headed into the kitchen after harvesting what I “knew” was romaine lettuce only to discover it was a Chinese cabbage. I finally coached myself to never believe the little voice that said “you’ll remember this is spinach/cosmos/bachelor’s button” as I planted. I invested in garden tags and garden marking pens; trust me, Sharpies will melt off garden tags in the rain.
About the Writer
Stacy Morrison is a journalist, marketing consultant, and dedicated hobby farmer and gardener based in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she grows more than 200 pounds of tomatoes most years and starts her lisianthus seeds in the dark days of January. Previously, she was editor in chief of Redbook and Modern Bride magazines and is the author of the memoir Falling Apart in One Piece (Simon & Schuster).