Our Urban Garden: The Birth of a New Adventure

 

      About six weeks ago, my husband and I ventured into the whole new world of gardening. I’ve never grown anything green by myself, and I always reticently agreed to housesitting my friends’ plants. God forbid, anything should die at my hand! But as newlywed bliss settled over our souls, the nurturing aspect of life kicked into high gear. Maybe we are preparing for parenthood, maybe spring is calling to our hearts, or maybe we just needed a new little adventure in life. Or perhaps, our new love was so plenteous and bountiful that it needed a joint expression of its overflowing joy. Whatever the reason behind this new endeavor, we launched full-force into gardening.

          As a missionary kid, I was exposed to some of Europe’s most beautiful gardens and flowers: the lush rose trellis in our neighbors’ yards, the austere jardin at the Chateau de Versailles, the ancient Lombardy poplars along the French country roads, and the blazing yellow mustard bushes in the nearby fields. It seemed almost every French person I met was born with a green thumb. While all our neighbors grew a gorgeous assortment of roses and lavender, our little American backyard was sadly lacking in spring array…except for a tiny handful of dainty yellow daffodils that grew every spring. We assumed the previous tenant had planted them, and they faithfully, albeit mysteriously, appeared every year we lived in that house.

          When we lived in Sweden, half the year was buried in an avalanche of snow from about October to May. But when spring finally came, so did the pretty little flowers. In fact, I remember walking to a neighborhood market about a mile away from our house and often bringing home a fresh bouquet of flowers just to remind myself that spring was near.

          Years later when I moved to Tulsa to attend Oral Roberts University, I fell deeply in love with the Prayer Gardens, a romance with nature that still lingers today. In fact, there’s no place of outdoor solace I’d rather be in than the ORU Prayer Gardens. The multitude of colorful flowers, the hovering canopy of strong trees, and the lush Elephant Ears guarding the Prayer Tower doors create the most amazing peaceful effect. Combined with the constant peace lingering on the campus and the soft trickle of water fountains, the gardens really are a solace for the soul. To this day, if ever I am need of a quiet place to pray or reflect, I immediately head over to the Prayer Gardens. It is my favorite place in the whole wide world!

          This love of flowers, once born from a missionary girl’s heart, continued to grow all through my single years in my 20s and 30s. Not married until age 32 and never a huge advocate of dating, I didn’t have a special someone to bring me flowers for no reason. So, I began a tradition of occasionally buying myself flowers…just because. The bouquets were inexpensive and didn’t last long, but they brought simple joy to my heart during their week of life in my home. And now with a wonderful husband in my life, I enjoy the special bouquets he often brings home as a surprise. (Life is pretty grand with a husband, I admit!)

          Despite this lovely appreciation of flowers, bouquets, and gardens, I’ve not yet attempted to grow anything from seed, bulb, or pot in all my 33 years. So when Jeff and I embarked upon this new journey, it began as an experiment and a learning process. Through the last six weeks, this endeavor has blossomed into a full-blown obsession, nature adventure, and a deeply spiritually enriching lesson.

We began our little venture with a few lily bulbs and a couple containers. As our curiosity grew, so did our purchasing weakness. Added to the collection were a variety of lilies, calla lilies, dahlias, a purple clematis, a yellow Carolina Jessamine, and two other exotic looking plants with gorgeous green leaves. We’ve endeavored to maintain a color scheme of pink, orange, yellow, and purple and have organized our plants in color-matching or neutral pots around our balcony. Since we live in an upstairs apartment, we call this “urban gardening,” our own terminology used to describe the more accurate term “container gardening.” I’ve lost count how many containers are now out on our balcony--the number is quickly approaching 30, give or take a pot.

    The potting process was an additional experiment to the gardening adventure. Most retailers sell pretty little pots at a pretty little penny, so Jeff and I opted for the ugly orange terracotta pots, which we brilliantly decided to paint ivory or purple. The painting idea turned out to be a smart way to provide a beautiful container at low cost. (Now we just have to figure out how to remove the paint spots from our balcony floor!)

Since most of our flowers are just now beginning to show tiny sprouts above the soil, I decided we needed to add some full blossoms to our seedling garden. So on Thursday, I took a little break from writing and headed to the Southwood Nursery on 91^st and Lewis to purchase a couple brightly colored gerbera daisies.

I’ve always loved gerbera daisies, but since June of last year, these big blossoms have taken on a special significance for me as they were my wedding flower. In fact, the wedding detail I remember most from our June 23^rd wedding is my bouquet of turquoise hydrangeas and orange and pink gerbera daisies. Amidst all the blur, activity, people, emotions, and life-altering moments, I vividly recall the happiness personified by my wedding bouquet. Gerbera daisies are such fun, happy little flowers, don’t you think?

To my heightened delight, I not only found a lovely group of brightly colored daisies last week at the nursery, but I even found them in orange and pink, our wedding colors. Giddy with excitement, I grabbed six of the happy little flowers and put them in my shopping basket. But oh, the beauty of spring that surrounded me at that moment, calling to me, beckoning me, luring me into the bounty of the greenhouse! All around were pink petunias, purple and yellow pansies, orange impatients, vivid orange and red bromeliads, soft pink geraniums, blue hydrangeas, white lilies, and an assortment of green plants, succulents, vines, and ivies. Overcome with spring fever, my newly found obsession kicked into high gear. I walked out of the store with my six gerbera daisies, two pink hydrangeas, a salmon colored geranium, a hot pink geranium, and a hanging basket of lovely tangerine impatients.

 

          Being the sweet husband that he is, Jeff was ever so patient and understanding when he arrived home and saw the balcony decked out in eleven new flower plants! Over the weekend, we made a trip to Garden Ridge to pick out some more containers for the new members of our urban garden. Deciding to break away from the terracotta method, we opted for some round purple porcelain containers for the hydrangeas and several decorated tin containers for the others.

During our research on gardening, we’ve discovered that all potted flowers must have a good drainage system. So if a pot doesn’t have holes in the bottom, we drill the holes ourselves. Apparently, the drainage holes allow the water to properly escape the soil, thus preventing root-rot.

After repotting our plants and buying some additional plant stands, we are beginning to see the lovely rewards of our hard work and patience. Almost every bulb we planted has exhibited at least some sign of growth, while the previously blooming flowers are continuing to blossom. What an exciting adventure for a newly married couple!

On the warmer afternoons, I’ve enjoyed sitting on my balcony drinking a cappuccino and working on freelance projects while soaking in the elegance of our infant urban garden. I may not hear the eloquent strands of French or the sing-song cacophony of Swedish, but I am living in the midst of my own personal Prayer Garden, right outside my own front door.