“Twenty-one gardens!!! Is that a typo in your last post, or are you crazy?”

If forced to choose one or the other, I’d have to admit that was not a typo. There are 21, more or less, depending on how you count them. And if I told you they contain more than 30,000 daffodils and other spring bulbs, you would certainly opt for the crazy. But it all started innocently enough.

We have always had a garden, of course. Diane and I both grew up with flowers and vegetables. But when we got our own place and for a long time after, I was the consummate self-sufficient homesteader. Flowers were a waste of time and resources: If you couldn’t eat it, I didn’t plant it.

This is a part of one of my 21 gardens, with just a few of my 30,000 spring bulbs. This “South Lawn” garden requires absolutely no input or maintenance, except for being mowed once a year, in late summer.

I’m not sure when that changed, but I do recall mentioning how much I enjoyed the “Grandma’s Garden” mix of old-fashioned annuals I’d planted — and how many readers were surprised that I’d planted flowers. (Somehow, that was in an article I wrote evaluating different potatoes, for one of the last issues of the old Blair & Ketchum’s Country Journal.)

The earlier focus on food didn’t indicate a lack of appreciation for beauty or anything like that. It had more to do with the wise allocation of resources. When you’re trying to produce all of your own food, plus running a publishing business on a shoestring budget, you have to set priorities. Flowers don’t rank very high in a struggle for survival.

All of this was highly evident at our office on the edge of a small town in southern Wisconsin. It had a spacious front lawn. Even back then I hated lawns as wasteful (to say nothing of boring), but I wanted the place to look nice and make a good impression on passers-by, if only to cheer up the world a tiny bit. So we planted fruit trees, and a “demonstration garden” featuring plants that were of interest to homesteaders, but which most people (at that time) were unfamiliar with. There was a lot of comfrey, and Jerusalem artichokes, but also munchie-type vegetables the Countryside staff enjoyed at break time.

As seems to be the story of my life, just as the apple trees were starting to bear, we moved. At first the Up North office was in our house, on a very, very dusty gravel road leading to a popular fishing lake, meaning being outdoors in summer was seldom pleasant; inside the boundaries of the Chequamegon National Forest, meaning clay soil in the shade as well as everything from rabbits and deer to black bears and bobcats; and to top it off, in Zone 3, where it’s tough to grow even iceberg lettuce and snow peas. I did, however, plant a nice patch of tulips and daffodils to brighten up the roadside in spring. The daffodils, at least, are still there.

When we moved the office to the former Nightingale tavern on the highway, I went wild. We built a long berm across the gravel parking lot and planted it with trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials of many kinds. It was awesome. For a year or two.

The tavern out in the woods in the middle of nowhere had also been a gas station (and more… but of course, except for the dance hall, skating rink, trap shoot and convenience store, the little house out back and the rooms upstairs are just rumors.) We knew the underground gas tanks had been removed, but there were some older tanks everyone had forgotten about, that were now leaking… right under the gorgeous new berm.

The LUST (Leaking Underground Storage Tank) cleanup was a nightmare. The berm was replaced afterwards, sort of. But it was never the same.

And a short time after that, the state bought the bermed strip to widen the highway, and that was the end of that garden.

Which brings us to the 32 acres we now call home. It’s only a few miles south of the aforementioned highway but with a south slope and in growing Zone 4, especially these past few years.

Shortly after buying the property I planted a few daffodils and a bunch of Muscari armenicum. The next fall, a few more. After a while they add up, especially when they look so nice and you get so good at planting them that a “few” becomes “a few thousand” at a time.

Deer and rabbits don’t bother daffodils and muscari, and of course, the bulbs multiply. Amazingly (to me), this year even the tulips came back. Experience has taught me to treat tulips as annuals. Last year I planted 200 of them in a large “50” to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary, fully expecting them to die out by now. Wouldn’t you know it, this spring they came back bigger and bolder and better than last year! I suppose that “50” will last forever, now. (I hope that’s a good omen.)

Meanwhile, I got interested in conifers. White and red pine, black and white spruce, and tamarack and balsam are natives here, and the former owner planted dozens of Colorado blue spruce. I added Serbian spruce, Concolor fir, and Limber, Austrian, and Mugo pines. This has evolved into a collection of several hundred trees, including more than a dozen varieties of white pine (Pinus strobus): trees with curly needles; pendulous weeping trees; miniature, dwarf, intermediate and full-size; and the gorgeous golden P. strobus “Louie.”

Hostas are a later addition. We only have about 75 different varieties, so far. But spring is here and the garden centers will be opening in a few weeks…

We still eat from our gardens. But we don’t have to plant as much for two as we did when six gathered around the dining table, three of them 6-ft. teenage boys. Combine that with having plenty of time and horticultural interests that are not only unabated but growing, and yes, I have 21 gardens.

And now that I’ve looked back like this, I don’t think I’m crazy, either. What I see here is the evolution of life, beyond the sidewalks.

Diane, in the lily garden in July.