By Dale Bryant
I love paths. Whether they be the matted areas where children have run through a field, paved trails where joggers and in-line skaters convene or a path of wood chips meandering through one of those open-to-the-public private gardens which occasionally appear along the backroads of America, I have a fascination for paths.
Some might call my fondness for paths an obsession. I hadn't thought of it this way until last weekend, when I was telling a friend about the new path I had created in my front yard. "What are you," she asked in disbelief, "the Sarah Winchester of gardens?"
That's when I realized that the river-washed stones I used on the path in my front yard had been sitting out by the side of the house since last spring, when I dug them out of the area under my kitchen window and replaced them with wooden planks, in a sort of three-pronged path that now circles the fountain.
Then I remembered that the year before was the spring it rained so unmercifully that we gardeners couldn't get outside until nearly summer. I was so happy to have cleared the weeds and overgrown groundcover to uncover the path that I wrote an essay about the experience.
"Oh, my god," I said. "I am the Sarah Winchester of gardens!"
Actually, what I might actually be is the Sarah Winchester of garden paths. Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester believed she would live as long as she continued building her house. Maybe those of us who never finish building our garden paths harbor a fantasy that our own journeys will continue as long as we keep redoing the paths that surround us.
There is something intrinsically pleasing about tearing out an old path and replacing it with a new one. Paths, after all, are such blatant metaphors for journeys great and small. Changing one's course in life can be so esoteric. It's hard to see the results or know whether you are now headed the right direction or whether you should have stayed the course after all. The nice thing about garden paths is that changing them is so physical. Carrying the stones from one place to the other, digging in the soil, settling them in. If you veer off in the wrong direction, it doesn't take long to figure it out. Mistakes can easily be corrected.
I was happy with the original paths. But things change. When we forged our trail of single steppingstones in the front yard, the redbud was a scrawny little thing; now it's a real tree. The flaxes were small and provided dramatic contrast to the softer grays and blues in the garden. Over four years, they grew into big harsh-looking plants that seemed like they belonged in a parking lot. Maybe my tastes just changed.
The real undoing of the original paths in the front yard and in the area beneath the kitchen window was the fountain grasses we so enthusiastically planted four years ago on the advice of a landscape designer. We were on the cutting edge of the drought-tolerant landscaping craze currently sweeping the area. In those days, we had to special-order our fountain grasses, our bush morning glories and our New Zealand flax. Now these drought-tolerant natives of such arid regions as Australia, New Zealand and the Mediterranean have become as ubiquitous at local nurseries as petunias used to be.
Every newly planted garden I pass on my morning walk looks like my garden used to look--until I declared war on fountain grass.
Oh, I liked the way the mounds looked when a gentle breeze blew through the leaves and the fuzzy flower spikes undulated like waves in the sea. And the first time I discovered a baby fountain grass growing in my yard, I lovingly dug it up and gave it to my neighbor. After all, I had paid a small fortune for the parent plants.
It didn't take long for me to discover, however, that those plants were baby machines. I had clumps of fountain grass growing everywhere. I spent all my time pulling out fountain grass progeny. Then a tiny piece of fluff from one of the flower spikes embedded itself in my dog's nose, and that cost me $200. That's when the war started in earnest.
The war ended last weekend when I finally completed the renovation project I had started in early April. The final step was to turn those single steppingstones into a meandering path two and three stones wide with no ground cover. Bare soil in a path is something I couldn't have imagined--and would not have allowed our landscaper to install--four years ago.
Someone asked me recently if I didn't regret spending so much money to have my yard professionally landscaped since I've spent so much energy--and not a little money--redoing things.
No regrets at all. Unlike some people who hire landscapers and leave them to their task, I worked side-by-side with the people who designed my garden and helped us select the plants. I asked questions, and they eagerly played the role of teacher. We did most of the planting ourselves, using their plans.
They gave me a nice garden. But more than that, they taught me how to do it. Like all good teachers, they helped me understand that I don't have to follow the path someone else created; with the right tools, I can create paths of my own.
And, in the spirit of Sarah Winchester, I imagine I'll keep right on building them.
Dale Bryant is the editor of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
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This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, May 7, 1997.
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