If You Go to a Flower Show with a Gardener

(With profound apologies to Laura Numeroff)

The heucheras caught her attention

If you go to a flower show with a gardener, she’s going to suggest that the two of you return to the show on Sunday afternoon.  She’ll also suggest you fill the car with empty crates.

When you return to the flower show on Sunday, you’re going to find that she has made a sharp deal with one of the landscape exhibitors to purchase 125 of the heucheras and tiarellas that populated an exhibit she admired.  She’s going to ask you to carry the now-plant-filled crates back to the car.

Tiarellas come home

When you get home, she’ll ask for your help planting the heucheras and tiarellas.  But not right away because it's too cold.  So you'll move them in and out of the garage every day to give them light but protect them at night against frost.  Once they're planted, she’ll also notice that while they make a nice ground cover, she's going to need accent plants.  She’ll ask you to accompany her to a nursery. 

At the nursery, she’ll remember how much money she saved on those heucheras and tiarellas.  She’ll therefore decide that your landscape could also use some fothergilla, viburnum, itea, kalmia, and other native plants.  She’ll ask your advice on which ones look best.  She’ll also ask your help in planting them.

So we needed compost...

All these new plants and ground covers will require compost.  She will order ten cubic yards of compost which will be delivered to the front of your property.  She will ask you to move the eight unused cubic yards of compost to the back of the property.  You will require lots of ibuprofen.

When the new native plants are arrayed around the property, she’ll discover that certain other shrubs, planted the previous year, no longer look attractive in their original locations.  She will ask you to dig them up and re-plant them ten feet away.

Native plants going to a new home

When the new fothergilla, viburnum, itea, kalmia, heucheras, and tiarellas are in place, she will be exceptionally pleased.  She will be so pleased that she will go to a nursery specializing in native perennials and come back with a car laden with dozens of ferns and wildflowers.  She will ask your help in planting them in special locations.  Some of these locations will require digging through what seems like solid granite. 

When the new ferns and wildflowers are planted you will need a long nap.  While you nap, she will bake you a chocolate cake with raspberry filling.  When you awaken from your nap and enjoy a slice of the cake, chances are you will remember that the next flower show is just ten months away.