In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

27 The Back like many gardeners, we consider our back garden a haven, a place to retire from the world and its demands, an intensely private world where we can be soothed by the first blooms of the oxblood lily, where summer nights are punctuated by the gentle, white flowers of sacred datura (Datura wrightii) and four o’clock (Mirabilis jalapa) as they offer their nectar to the swirling hawk moths. The porch and its adjacent patio are now an extension of the living room, and serve as our dining room for much of the year. This is where we have morning coffee while the lesser goldfinch breakfast on the bounty of the bee bush (Aloysia wrightii), where we consider the next garden challenge, where we lay out the varieties of tomato seed that will be tried in the coming spring, or where we chat over the week, all the while staring down the path to the blazing red bird of paradise (Caesalpinia pulcherrima ) and the white oleander (Nerium oleander)‘St. Agnes.’ The main patio has hosted numerous friends and associates, parties and soirees, but its most treasured time is when we simply sit, just the two of us, watching the first nighthawk of the year as it swoops close enough to hear its normally silent wings, or stay out long enough chatting and nursing our wine until the bats and the stars tell us that the night has truly begun. Every garden needs a place like this, a spot where just sitting is the best idea, where all the other lives that share the garden show up—maybe just once, like the elf owl; or from time to time, like the small gray squirrel that peers at us as it passes by, inquisitive and uncertain; or continuously, like the cactus wrens and thrashers, the Abert’s towhee family, and the generations 28 • A Place All Our Own of hummingbirds, all of which race from side to side, tree to tree, flower to flower. It is all here, the life of this garden, out in the open, and we are charmed and grateful to be part of the action with this most personal patio as our garden’s lodestar. But the back garden was not always like this—in fact it was a deserted and desolate place when we bought the house despite the fact that it was the principle reason we fell in love with the place. What we saw was room—lots of it—with not much in the way of any future plans for the garden, save the creosote. The freedom of having next to nothing left over from a previous garden was so attractive that in the beginning we were overwhelmed with ideas and dreams for the place. Initially, the backyard was in two parts. Roughly half of it was fenced in by a block wall that had no opening or union with the other half. This left the western part of the back entirely open to the alleys that bound it, and for a number of years we left it like that, partly because we could not figure out what to do with the large area “outback,” and partly for lack of money to fix it. But almost immediately we set to work with vigor on the interior part. In retrospect I think this was wise, and I enjoin all new gardeners or those with a new place to consider this approach, which was basically to start at the house and work out. After all, this is where you will spend a lot of your time; this is what you will see the most and probably where you will allow your friends to visit. Taking on an entire garden all at once, especially if it is large, is a daunting task and, even with unlimited funds to hire legions of people to help you out, it can overwhelm anyone. So start small; start at the doorway to the house and work out from there. In this garden, the view from the back porch was secured by a large mimosa that dominated the center of the area directly outside the door. Although we had no definite plans for this large open area, we agreed that a mimosa would never have a place in our plans. I am always amazed by the timidity of some gardeners when it comes to removing a plant, particularly a tree, that has either passed its prime, has become more of a...

Share