My Garden Is a Mess and About to Get Messier

Happy September and happy Labor Day. The days are getting shorter, and laboring on the balcony I am not. For the first time since I started gardening seven years ago, my seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm for it seems to be flagging, and the garden this year shows it. 

It isn’t that I’ve lost interest or enjoyment in plants and the small acts of tending that keep my garden alive, or that I’ve ceased to daydream about bulbs and seeds I’d like to grow someday. Rather, with first-time motherhood looming this fall, a couple of things have happened.

First, doctor’s orders and my own body have forced me to take it easy. Apparently there are risks to gardening for pregnant women, such as exposure to toxoplasmosis and chemicals. I told my doctor not to worry because I only gardened in pots on my balcony, but then my husband chimed in, “The balcony is full of RATS,” which, in fairness, is on-and-off true. The doctor very clearly instructed me to avoid rat poop henceforth. And anyway, between first trimester fatigue and the aches and ungainliness of my ever-expanding body, the thought of doing any serious gardening, hoisting heavy pots and bags of soil and whatnot, has sounded pretty impossible most of the time.

Second, my inability to imagine what my life will be like after the baby comes has interrupted my constant garden plotting. If I take a bunch of cuttings now for plants next spring, will I remember to water them? If I order a bunch of bulbs, will I have space in the fridge to store them and the time and energy to plant them? Will I have the strength to clear out spent planters, re-pot rootbound trees, and divide overgrown perennials? With a newborn baby to keep alive, I fear the answer to all of the above is probably not!

So as the months have gone by, gardening has taken a back seat, and it may remain there for some time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love my garden. Actually, my laissez-faire approach this summer has been liberating and even yielded moments of glory — more reflections on that below. 

I’ll never give it up altogether; I’m just giving myself permission to do less this year. Some pots will sit empty after annuals die, and needy seedlings will have to wait, and that’s okay. But someday, I want my child to learn how seeds grow, where our food comes from, why plants are important, and that even if you only have a balcony and a windowsill, it’s a shame not to garden with them.

Embracing a Wild Summer

One thing I envy about gardens in the ground is the chance to really let nature take its course. Since they can draw water from deep underground and take in nutrients from a living soil environment, plants in the ground look after themselves. While of course some will succumb to drought or disease, others will thrive, and gardeners can choose to save time, energy, and resources by favoring the tougher, more adaptable plants. Without water and nutrients, plants in pots will die — end of story. I can’t just walk away from my garden and let survival of the fittest play out.

That said, I have been much more hands-off this year, and embraced a wilder aesthetic. The balcony has a very decadent, spontaneous look to it right now, verging on neglect (but not quite! I’ve kept everything adequately watered and fed, barely). Nearly everything in my pots is infested or infected with something. I’ve let herbs bolt and flower and erigeron go to seed; I’ve let caterpillars eat my columbine and aphids devour my calendula. What do I need a picture-perfect garden for, anyway? That’s why I deleted Instagram! Plus, it’s been great for wildlife. Just today I saw hoverflies, carpenter bees, and a katydid all enjoying my leafy mess of a garden.

I’ve had some real wins even with this lazier approach. My fig tree foliage grew back lushly after a hard February prune. My lemon tree is popping off (maybe by the time the fruits ripen, I’ll have a baby!). It hasn’t been a great summer for flowers — too cold (one of the coldest in decades!) — but my three big pots of clarkias were stunning in late June, a fabulous encore to the spring bulb show. 

Now, nearly every pot has seedlings sprouting, either on purpose (I impulsively sowed some sunflowers and marigolds once the clarkias went over) or self-sown accidents, maybe weeds or maybe something nice like erigeron. If I end up with fall flowers, great! If all the seedlings get eaten by birds or rodents, too bad.

Keeping It Manageable

Aside from accepting imperfection, I’ve kept my gardening ambitions in check. Whereas in the past I’ve been known to sow eight varieties of tomatoes or attempted to grow high-maintenance crops like peppers and basil, this year I’ve kept my edibles manageable: woodland strawberries, Mediterranean herbs, and two little pots of adorable mini tomatoes called “Orange Hat.” And they’ve all performed well!

I’ve also scaled back my tendency to keep moving things around. As I said, lugging soil and heavy pots hasn’t sounded like a good idea for quite some time, so I’ve put off a lot of re-potting and let things be. The “Antique Shades” violas I sowed last fall are still going strong, and while I never planned on keeping them all the way through the summer, why toss something that’s blooming its socks off?

And besides my sunflower/marigold experiment, I’m planning a pause in propagation for the next few months. For taking cuttings and sowing seeds, there’s always the spring. One baby at a time is enough.

Winding Down

I have a couple items on my gardening to-do list for before the baby arrives. Pots full of dead dirt depress me, so I’m hoping to at least empty out any spent planters at the end of the season and give the balcony floor a nice sweep (or ask my husband to do it). Hopefully, my perennials can tough out the winter, with a little watering help from family and friends.

And I haven’t completely ruled out buying a few daffodils. As I learned this past spring, they don’t need chilling to bloom. Having pretty flowers to look forward to as I emerge from postpartum fog seems like a good idea.

As for Botany on the Balcony, I have no clearer picture of what the future holds than I do for my garden or my own life. Just know that if the posts stop coming for a while, the balcony garden lives on.