Plants that honor loved ones

Maritta Perry Grau
Frederick County Master Gardener

(1/1) While we still have a couple more months of possible snow and ice, now is a good time to be thinking about and planning your spring gardens. Are there changes you want to make? Put in or expand a vegetable garden? Add some perennials or annuals? Shrubs? Trees? Plant something new you’ve never tried before? Do you need to consider how much shade or sun a garden will get? And how about your climate zone? Do you know the estimated date for the last freeze in your area? Are there any microclimates in your garden, where temperatures might be a little warmer a little sooner than in the rest of the yard?

Have you ever thought of planting a memory garden, or perhaps planting a flower, shrub, or tree in honor or memory of a beloved family member? It can be a good conversation starter with people alive right now. ("See that patch of zinnias? I planted them there because I know how much you love them, and when I see them blooming, I think of you!")

When you’re considering additions and expansions to the garden, think about the people (and pets!) you love and who are with you right now. Maybe you’d like to plant something for them. Although a bouquet of flowers will quickly wilt and a platter of brownies will rapidly disappear (at least in my house), a house plant or one in your garden could be there for many years, evoking fun discussions with that loved person in life and warm memories later on.

Such honoring or memorializing isn’t really new. For example, during the Victorian era of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, a rural landscaping movement began as some towns and cities found their cemeteries filling up, and churches, synagogues, and town planners began to move cemeteries to the outskirts of town where there was lots more space.

The new cemeteries had rows and rows of graves, elaborate statuary, and mausoleums, many modeled after PPre laChaise Cemetery in Paris or those in other big cities, but cemetery planners took advantage of the natural landscapes to create elaborate plantings of flowers, shrubs, and trees, just as we today may buy a brick in a pathway or a bench to honor a family member in a park, a cityscape, or other place.

According to Wikipedia, "The ‘garden’ cemetery movement promoted larger, park-like spaces on the outskirts of town. These cemeteries were planned as public spaces from their inception, and provided a place for all citizens to enjoy refined outdoor recreation amidst art and sculpture. Elaborate gardens were planted and family outings to the cemetery became popular social activities." On holidays, families held picnics and tended the graves. Even today, some people walk, jog, or bicycle through these park-like cemeteries.

But Victorian era cemeteries aren’t the only places with special plantings that honor loved ones. You may find just the right spot in your own lawn or garden to tuck in some special plants. You may draw inspiration from places you’ve visited, pictures you’ve seen in magazines, books, or even those garden catalogs.

Some of the places my husband and I have visited, have inspired many of our plantings. These places have also guided us in our choices of garden style: Not for us the severe, formal arrangements of the great houses of Europe, with not a twig or leaf out of place, every blade of grass carefully trimmed. No, we discovered early on in our travels that we much preferred what is known as the English cottage garden—a wild profusion of blooms, carefully planned but exuberant in their togetherness. Also, whether trees, shrubs, or flowers, many of the plants in our garden are there as much because they remind us of a loved one as because they fulfill our master plan (which, by the way, seems to change every year) to complete the garden.

• My father loved rhododendrons, as do we, so we have several rhodies, some of which he got to see in bloom for several years, and which in another three months or so, will shout out their beauty with blossoms from deepest red to palest pink.
   
• My parents used to take my brother and me every two or three months to visit our maternal grandparents deep in the mountains of West Virginia. One Easter vacation, when I was 19, we brought along my then-boyfriend (and now husband of 54 years). The mountains were sprinkled with redbuds in bloom, and as my grandparents’ home was nestled in a small hollow with mountains close around them, it seemed almost like a fairyland of tiny pink blossoms everywhere we looked. Although they spent many years living in Virginia, my grandfather loved those mountains. Once we had our own yard, I planted a redbud as a reminder of my grandfather and those Appalachian hills he loved.
   
• My maternal grandmother and my mother also gifted me with heirloom peonies (Paeonia), irises (Iridis various species), and wild buttercup flowers for our first house in Annapolis, and even more when we moved to Frederick in 1973. Every spring these perennials bring my grandmother to mind. I remember her digging up those peonies and irises, advising me in her wonderful Appalachian drawl of the best ways to plant and nourish those flowers. They’re still going strong, and I’ve now continued the tradition, potting up and passing rooted plants on to my sons and their families and to friends and neighbors.
   
• Husband Hal loves petunias (Petunia species), so every spring we plant lots of those, intermingled with annual vinca (actually, Catharanthus roseus, Madagascar periwinkle) in the sunny gardens.
   
• Our crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), while not originally from Hal’s Annapolis home, was planted in honor of his mother. She had several, ranging from pale to dark pink, that her parents had planted some time after 1913, when they built their house (now known as the restaurant Vin 909) in the Eastport suburb of Annapolis.
   
• For many years we had a magnificent weeping cherry on the front corner of our yard. Our younger son’s wife took annual pictures around Easter of their oldest daughter, from age two onward, and of their other children, under the blossom-loaded weeping cherry. Our cherry has since died, but she continues the tradition now that they have their own weeping cherry.

Chances are, you’ve already cozied up to some catalogs online or in reality, and are dreaming over (drooling over?) plants for this coming spring. Do you have anything planted that could be a conversation started with loved ones? If not, where might you tuck in a few flowers, a shrub, a tree that could spark those memories, or maybe just coax a smile and a warm tug on your heart as that person flashes in your mind? And just imagine the joy you’d bring to that person when you show him/her that special something planted with him/her in mind.

And you can tell Fido he absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, ever dig there.

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