Spring gets me thinking about vegetable fecundity and wanderlust. Since both are more or less relegated to my fantasy life right now, I’ve been imagining the former since it’s more tangible and my enjoyment of it is much more static. That means while I’m reading and typing in my squalid surroundings, I can imagine myself in the Wordsworthian comfort of vibrantly placid plant growth.
Accordingly, here are the plants I need to have in the low-walled garden I’m going to have before my house at some indistinct point in the future.
For now it’s just in my head.
A yew tree, preferably several centuries old. It adds a touch of macabre age and reminds me of the bristlecone pine, the oldest living thing on earth. Because of the tree’s shape, I’d need it to be in the front, left corner of my lot, cutting an imposing figure.
A lilac bush closer to the house, on the right side but not obscuring it. There’s absolutely nothing more energizing in the spring than the smell of lilacs. That scent is actually one of the most powerful motifs of spring for me.
Daylilies. They are the most invincible perennial, and they do whatever you want them to. They’ll be all along the inside of the wall, and spilling out of the gateless front opening alongside my crushed-brick path.
Periwinkle as ground coverage. Hopefully it will also spill out through any “accidental” breakage in my low stone wall.
Finally, a few elevated tufts of syngonium for variation.
I’ll be sitting on an understated, ashwood bench under one of house’s forward-facing left windows.
