Answer: Yes, please.
A reader wondered why I don't write about men in the garden. “I’m not qualified,” I wrote back. There’s only one man in my garden at a time, since I embraced serial monogamy.
The man in my garden for the last 26 years is not a gardener. He doesn’t want to be a gardener. He calls himself the “gardener’s helper.” He specializes in heavy lifting. I bring him in for big jobs: loads of mulch, relocating shrubs, felling large trees. You get the idea. He also does the edging, and it’s both neat and original. He does all this without complaint. Though he does require close supervision since he tends to manhandle things.
In all his years of helping me, he hasn’t learned the names of any trees or plants. “What?” you say. “Come on, how can that be?” It’s just his nature. He is not someone who likes to go deep into the weeds or the details. He was the same way when he ran a company with over 100 employees. He shared his vision—and the employees were free to make it come alive in their daily work.
But he sees bigger things: the contours of the land—he sees how a large swath of blue blossoms looks above that gray-green foliage on that plant that attracts all the cats (Nepeta); he sees how short-lived and explosive that yellow bush (forsythia) is in the spring. He sees color keenly and is an inspired color consultant. “Plant that little lime green plant in front of that taller, dark burgundy one,” he says. “You mean Heuchera ‘limelight’ in front of Heuchera ‘plum pudding’?” I ask. “Of course,” he says.
This is where his mind dwells.
A few female gardeners have shared their husbands’ “garden atrocities.” One husband weed-whacked a beautiful, mature perennial bed to the ground. I told my friend it would likely regrow, though she wondered about the future of their relationship. Dear readers, I’m not Ann Landers and this is not a Dear Abby column. But since forgiveness started in the garden, why not forgive? And plenty of gardeners are men. They just don’t happen to live with me.
My Uncle Peter gardens in Minnesota, where he’s just finished his Master Gardener coursework. He told me that for his volunteer hours he wants to educate young school children about the interconnectedness of the earth. He fears that not all children are as lucky as he was to have a mother who taught her children that all living things are connected to the earth.
Amen to that.
I know that when my uncle enters that school and those children see his kind blue eyes and hear his tender voice, they will move in closer to listen to what he has to say. There’s all his knowledge, but most of all there’s still a lot of kid in him—full of wonder for all living things. He has all the right credentials, don’t you think?