The West End Journal is pleased to welcome Beth Lopez as our new “Pots & Plants” columnist.

Beth started life in Ontario but came to Vancouver in 2001 to be near her daughters. She retired from teaching French Immersion in 2012 and, ever mindful of that old adage that what we focus on grows, has been enjoying the fruits of her labors with her husband Richard in the West End ever since. Her current life is filled with gardening, tutoring, landscaping, cooking, tillage, sewing, cultivation, knitting, floriculture, embroidery, planting, beading, growing, and her newest skill — basket weaving using her homegrown sweet grass.

We thank Peter Gribble for his five years of informative and entertaining contributions and wish him well with his other endeavours, including his fantasy fiction series The City of the Magicians.

LESSONS FROM MY FATHER’S GARDEN
Gardens Are Joy!

by Beth Lopez

Beth will share her years of gardening wisdom with our readers, including the advice to “never touch your face while gardening".” Thanks Beth, we’ll keep that in mind!

My Dad grew up on a farm and always considered himself to be a farmer. By the time I came along, he worked in a factory but we had a huge garden. In the summer, when he got home from work, he’d put his lunch box on the picnic table and walk through the garden. I would trail behind him. I learned important lessons like – that snake is not an enemy. We like him in the garden, he eats the insects. I heard the same story about the toads. He also explained the job of the worms to enrich and lighten the soil.

I dug up a flower in the woods behind the house, careful to get the whole root. I planted it in the corner of garden that he said I could call my garden. It slowly wilted and died. When I asked him why, he asked me, “What did it look like where you found it” and gently explained that each plant had an environment where it grows happily and it won’t grow unless you can duplicate that environment. The blood root didn’t like being in full sun, it grew shaded by tall trees. He didn’t just tell me before planting that it wasn’t going to work. He let the experiment run its course. I learned a gardening lesson I have remembered for almost 70 years.

He’d notice the tomato or point out a cucumber and tell me that it would be ready for eating in a week. He’d pull up a carrot, wipe the dirt off on his jeans and break it so we could share.

Sweet Grass coming back after first cutting.

I have lived in rentals my whole life. The one thing I always wanted was a piece of dirt of my own to plant in. I have window sills full of plants but that’s not the same. I was the frustrated daughter of a farmer.

Shortly after I retired, I was given the best gift – a patio was added to my apartment. I even have a raised brick planter, six by two feet. I also have space for pots on the cement. I have my own piece of dirt.

For the last six years, I have been playing in the dirt. I’ve grown herbs and my cooking has benefited. I have a hard time laying out money for a small plastic pack of wilting herbs, but all summer I slip out with my scissors as I make supper and mix in or sprinkle basil or oregano, sage or thyme, summer savoury or dill.

I have a swath of sweet grass too, something I was never able to find in the wild. I take two cuts of sweet grass hay over the summer, one at the end of June and one in late August. Every year I use my grass to create wonderfully fragrant gifts for friends.

I have a clematis in a big tub. It climbs bamboo poles leaning against the fence. Some years the blooms are more plentiful than others and I must do some research about how to encourage more blooms.

Alliums’ big purple pompoms will show up in the early summer.

I’ve grown Patchouli in a window box but I have to bring it in each fall. It has survived moving in and out for a couple years. Yes, that prevalent incense from the 60s comes from an actual plant.

The sweet peas are my greatest love. The outside edge of my planter is a wrought-iron fence and every year I plant seeds in October so the peas can climb the fence. They slowly sprout and grow over the winter and begin blooming in the late spring. The first summer I did it, I had a lush patch of sweet peas that bloomed for more than a month. As sweet peas bloom, you have to pick them before they go to seed. As long as they don’t make seeds, they will keep on trying and the flowers keep coming. This past winter, we had an especially cold snap and those fall-planted sweet peas didn’t survive. More seeds were planted in early April and I hope I will have a good showing of flowers again this year although they will be later.

In my father’s garden, the only bulbs were the onions. I fell in love with Alliums during a visit to Van Dusen gardens. They are a relative of onions and garlic, but those long straight stems and big purple pompoms are spectacular so I had to have a go at planting them. I’ve included a few Hyacinth and Daffodils which show up first, but it’s the Allium that I’m waiting for. They show up early summer, after the spring bulbs are gone. I’ve just added a few Dahlias. I do love the mathematical precision of the Dahlia and I do hope they survive. This is all new; bulbs are a whole new area for me to study and based on what I am seeing, I have studying to do.

I have found such joy playing in my garden. I’ve also found frustration and disappointment but the joy wins out. I have loved burying my nose in sweet pea blossoms; sharing the blessings of sweet grass; sitting on the patio with a friend, surrounded by green and blossoms, birds and butterflies; telling guests that I grew the herbs in the soup. There is the winter joy of reading seed and plant catalogues and planning the next year’s garden. There is the ongoing joy watching each sprout, each new leaf, and each bud opening.

Gardens are joy.