Out To Pastoral

By John Idol

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—4/19/10—My hopes of becoming a gardener in retirement, with a yard bursting in color from pansies, petunias, impatiens, roses, hollyhocks, tulips, daylilies, and many other spirit-brightening flowers, went down the gullets of hungry deer. I had enjoyed such an array of beauty in Clemson in a small yard and looked forward to making Idol’s little acre (.03 less than a full) in Hillsborough a showplace—my own blossoming version of an English garden.

Believing that fences don’t make good neighbors, I refused to install a barrier between me and roaming, gormandizing cervus. No suggested remedy, from human hair to my own piss, kept my prettiest bloomers from serving as dessert for deer. To have even a few spots of unmolested color in my yard, apparently I had to be content with jonquils and hyacinths, untouchable items in cervine menus.  But then I made a discovery, one that, in variety and subtlety, made up for lack of color.

One day, as I was bewailing my losses, I noticed that the few volunteer ferns growing in the shadiest part of my yard showed no sign of nibbling or uprooting. They prospered where they were, these descendants of one of earth’s earliest plants. Among this prospering crew was a Christmas fern, a species I’d known from my childhood in the Blue Ridge. Close to it were two species I didn’t recognize, native to Piedmont North Carolina, I surmised. Their presence offered an opportunity for both getting my hands dirty and gaining knowledge of tested survivors.

After all, I soon learned, ferns evolved, said one source, over 350 years ago, doing so well at one point, during the Carboniferous Period, that naturalists refer to the era as the Age of Ferns. Why not make these volunteers my companions, why not flaunt them, why not frustrate as many deer as I could?

Those questions turned me into a rockery fern gardener. Becoming one didn’t exactly put me in a bed of roses, if you’ll pardon at least one relevant cliché. For ferns demand not only respect, love, admiration, and knowledge, but work as well, especially in a climate prone to extended periods of drought. With watering hose held in hand before my groin, I sometimes wonder why I don’t attract as many jesting tourists as the statue of the little pissing boy in Brussels. From a certain angle, I’m sure I appear to be emptying a very large bladder.

I turned to websites on ferns posted by North Carolina State and Virginia Tech universities to learn about ferns native to the Piedmont and Blue Ridge. Links on those sites led me to retailers of ferns, and visits to Lowe’s and Home Depot found me a curious and ready customer. What to buy and where and when to plant took me down roads I’d not before taken.

But it wasn’t exactly a road I wanted. Instead, picking up a hint from the design of footpaths through the Biltmore Estate and New York City’s Central Park by Frederick Law Olmsted, I decided I’d have something I dubbed Idol’s Ramble, a curving, pea-pebble-covered path leading from one side of my backyard to the other. On either side of the ramble and then in roughly circular areas leading from the ramble I planted ferns. Reserving the shadiest spots for ferns disliking sunshine, placing sun-tolerant ones where the canopy was thin, I laid out the chosen ones and surrounded them with rocks.

A few of the “boulders” had special meaning, for I returned to my great grandfather’s farmstead and found three nearly rectangular rocks he’d used for foundation stones when he built his barn. I wanted them because they were the only remaining items from his occupation of the farmstead. These became companions to favorite ferns and links to my Blue Ridge past. A further reminder of the Blue Ridge appeared in the mica-encrusted rocks I picked up in the meadows and along streams in the farmstead, ten acres of which I now call my own. From where I sit in my study writing this piece, brilliant sparkles from the mica greet my eyes this bright April afternoon.

Along my ramble and in the beds linked to it, I have planted over a hundred ferns, the most common species being the Autumn and the Christmas fern. These are hardy; well-suited to the blazing heat of summer and the cold of winter. The Autumn does have the additional trait of color, emerging with bronzy heads and fronds in the spring and holding on to some hints of bronze throughout the growing season. Other ferns, the Five-fingered Maidenhair, the Lady-in-Red, and the Japanese Painted, especially, add touches of color.

But it is not color alone that I enjoy as I take my ramble. The appearance of fiddle-heads in the spring reminds me of a special treat that my friend and co-editor Melinda Ponder introduced me to when we dined on exquisitely prepared fiddle-heads in a Boston restaurant. The wide array of shapes captivates me: Lace, Ostrich, Cinnamon, Crested Male, Japanese Holly, Southern Wood, to name a few in my garden.

My efforts to spread my rockery collection throughout the backyard, though costly in labor and materials, went well for two years, one year of which was practically desert-dry because of a lingering drought. Then an unexpected event, the cutting down of great oaks from an adjoining forest, destroyed much of the canopy my ferns needed to escape the sun’s blistering kiss.

Great lumbering machines, blades whirring and jaws tugging, clamored from tree to tree, bringing them crashing to the earth. Then, lumbermen with whining chain saws removed limbs, leaving them piled in heaps as the crew clear-cut the 40-acre tract adjacent to my lot. This act of deforestation forced me to relocate nearly half of my collection to shady areas on my property, in the scorching heat of July.

This timber-cutting, requiring as it did the survey of property, left me with another job of relocation, for I had misread boundary stakes and, thus, planted ferns on a neighbor’s lot. He had no problem with that invasion. A problem of another sort forced the relocation. He was adding a room and garage to his house and a larger drain-field would be required for his septic tank. Out must come 30 more ferns, again in blazing weather. Out, too, must come all the rocks I’d arranged around them. But the task was made far simpler when he had his construction crew use their Bobcat to hoist the heavier stones to my new bed.

I now hope that the rescued ferns, many of which are showing new life, will prosper. For ferns, as my title suggests, gave me new life as a gardener.