POTS & PLANTS
/THE GARDENING COMMITTEE
The Weeping Norway Spruce (Picea abies ‘pendula’).
How well do you know your neighbours? The people next door or down the hall who are quiet but Friday-Saturday night noisy; the ones with regular habits who say, ‘Hey’ when they see you; the ones with irregular hours you spot once a month or less. Then there are your regular or not so regular 30-second elevator companions.
If you shift your habits even slightly you encounter people you’ve never seen before who may have lived in the building for years.
Then there are those who are glued to the security camera and know everybody who comes and goes and when.
All that changes when you join the gardening committee.
Suddenly you’ve found kindred spirits who love plants; who have visited gardens around the world; who hope to take the Master Gardener program; who will show you their garden photos of the place they left when they downsized.
Joining a gardening committee is not unlike joining a plant society or gardening club. You find deeply knowledgeable and experienced people, enthusiastic, hard-working beginners, wise but lazy eccentrics, frustrated but aspiring dictators, and people who may become lifelong friends.
To get this eclectic assemblage to achieve a working consensus, you will agree the existing landscaping around the building was installed by short-sighted developers who contracted the Quick and Dirty Landscaping Company to plant an installation of the easiest, most available plants at the cheapest cost. So now it needs a little tidy up: something moved, something planted, something borrowed, something blue …
Before you know it, it’s has morphed into a multi-headed version of Butchart Gardens or worse, Versailles.
To offset Dictator’s demand to rip everything out and pave over every surface (environmental concerns bounce off of dictator’s back) answer with the reminder: good landscaping can increase property value by 15 to 20 percent. Eccentric’s wild notions must be winnowed down to the one brilliant idea dormant in the chaff but sized and vetted by knowledge, then implemented by Beginner.
Yet what brings all feet back down into the compost is the most pivotal of all questions: what is in the budget?
If the budget is small or nonexistent, this segues to the constrained single-purchase-a-year gardening philosophy. People from gardening committees will go to a garden centre and say, ‘We’ve got $300 to spend!” This is great, but how much sun do you have, where does the irrigation system lie (if you have one), how poor is the soil, what is your square footage, do you have a height restrictions and so forth. One year the purchase may be the requisite gardening tools. Or if you’re quick: catch one of those ‘downsizers’ before they move in and ask if they are interested in donating their gardening tools to the building. It’ll mean more money for plants, soil amenders and counselling sessions.
After budgetary concerns, there are the property’s size and aspects. Can you truly plant a tree? Well, yes, of course you can but what will it be like in ten, twenty years or considerably less? How much money will the Strata be obliged to put aside for the yearly unclogging of the sewage line to rid it of roots? Full-grown trees also provide an ascending highway for squirrels to the roof with off-ramps to balconies. How much shadow will the young tree eventually shade of the single sunny spot in the entire plot? It can be completely eclipsed in as little as three years depending on the tree.
To counter the tree impasse, Eccentric suggests planting five Norway spruces of the weeping variety (Picea abies ‘pendula’.) Tall, narrow, weeping, they would create a striking five tine strobe effect on the landscape and the property would stand out on the entire block. Knowledge will rightly suggest the same effect will be enhanced by planting only three, remain within budget and block fewer windows. Strangely, all committee members have fun debating and determining the best sightlines for tree placement coming up and going down the street. Dictator is diplomatically appeased with paving step-stoning through the trees to the entrance. Beginner is enthusiastic throughout.
Spring is an excellent time to reassess the potentials, the budget, the areas that need improvements, the areas that don’t, who’s going to water and weed when others go on holiday and who will be reliable to mow the four square feet of lawn. The answers to these and other questions reduce the possibility of surprise and arbitrary changes while establishing a consistent, long term plan for the maintenance of the landscape for future strata councils.
Don’t rush and don’t be bullied by other residents who may offer impractical and damaging advice and demands. I once lived in a condo complex where someone complained of fall leaves drifting into the garage and nagged a garden committee member to hire, without consulting the others, an ‘arborist’ to chop off one entire side of the avenue of trees bordering the garage. The entire community was affected. It provoked revolt, resignations and one person sold their condo because of it and moved away. It was too painful to walk on that side of the building where the avenue of disfigured trees grew. My partner and I moved away shortly after, as well. So far as I know, every fall, autumn leaves continue to drift into the garage.
Once the policies are agreed upon, the decisions made, the items purchased, the plants planted and watered, the pavers laid; the gardening committee stands back to survey and appreciate what they’ve begun.
Dictator takes espresso shots, Knowledge sips green tea, eccentric will have their mint juleps and Beginner drinks only soy milk, but at least the garden has started down an agreed-upon path.
It’ll take some time, money, and effort to reach the goals. Dictator, Beginner, Eccentric and Knowledge look upon what happened one spring with a certain, much-qualified sense of accomplishment. They make unlikely friends and have long conversations starting in the elevator, continuing into the lobby and out into the street.
Yes, it is a work in progress but after all, the Original Gardener supposedly took six days to create the First Garden, the committee can be excused for a taking a little longer.
