(Photos courtesy of Craig Summers Black.)
The Transplanted Gardener: Iowa isn’t Hawaii
By Craig Summers Black | 05.06.09
Today, Diggin’ It will feature two posts by Craig Summers Black (one now and one this afternoon). He’s an award-winning writer, editor, and photographer who gardens feverishly on a weedy acreage in the Midwestern heartland. He has found that it can be more than a tad colder in Iowa than at his previous gardens in California, Hawaii, Texas, and Florida. But he’s learning:
Gardening is much like house hunting: It’s all about three things – location, location … you get the idea. So why on earth would I go from this first photo to the second one??
Yes, up top that’s Waikiki, and below, yes, unfortunately that is a seating area in my latest garden. Gives you the chills just looking at it.
After stints in Hawaii, Texas, Florida, and then California – and repeatedly telling my wife I could never live anywhere I couldn’t grow palm trees – we made an economic decision to move to her native Iowa.
The fiscal collision of a Bay Area mortgage and a beaming baby girl made us choose: Sell the house or sell the child? We made the conventional decision.
And now in the living room grows my palm tree – in the heart of the heartland, where I have had to reinvent my garden style anew. And also find out what the heck happens to plants in climes with much colder than sweater weather.
Unfortunately, while learning the long list of plants that are not winter-hardy on the frozen tundra (the meaner reaches of USDA Zone 5), I have killed many perennials. And shrubs. And, pricier still, trees.
But the rewards here – gardening and otherwise – are great. We have real summer here, not the foggy windy blasts of the Oakland Hills. And we have water that reliably falls from the sky – I feel for drought-stricken Texas. And we have fertile land (not sand!) – an acreage actually – with room for that growing gal and an outlandish menagerie. See?
In the days and weeks to come, I’ll delve into the particulars of gardening where temps range from summer’s mid-90s to winter’s minus 20s. There will be detours into the cultural whiplash that constitutes an introduction to pastoral living. And there will be musings and recollections of former gardens in states that had actual coastlines.
In the meantime, there’s this list – new, cold-hardy plants recommended by Bluebird Nursery (note that this is a wholesale-only nursery), whose motto is “If they’ll grow in Nebraska, they’ll grow anywhere.”
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2. gfinoaktown | 05.06.09
It is never foggy in the Oakland Hills! Why malign our fair-weather region?
3. Anna/Flowergardengirl | 05.06.09
I can see why you made the move. I moved back to NC after living all over the USA. It’s pretty, very little snow, and affordable. I can grow just about anything but tropicals. Love your style of writing.
4. Carolyn Hopper | 05.12.09
Transplanting takes strong roots. Roots that reach into the soil of a new experience. The experience will include “New England oysters”-the fist sized rocks that forever surface in a Connecticut or Massachusetts garden- or
the alluvial soil surrounding the watershed of the Potomac River, or the clay of a river plain in Montana. The wind and rain, hail or snow that make their home where my husband lived in Iowa or here on a prairie in Montana give us the opportunity to grow, to find out what we are made of. While I miss the absence from my garden here in Montana of the flowers I loved in Connecticut or Maryland, I can let the climate and beauty of Nature shape me and bend with the wind, so to speak. There’s nothing quite like a good challenge to keep me on my gardening toes. Cousins of what grows prolifically on the mountains dot my flower beds. The scent of Rosa rugosa is a memory. The fragrance of lupine has followed me around the country.
While you bloom where you are planted, I am sure you will find growing miracles every day. Good luck with your garden. and check out the new magazine “Zone 4″. I think you will like it
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1. Becky K. | 05.06.09
Nice article but I did want to offer a correction. While Bluebird Nursery is mainly a wholesale business, they do have a retail store near their corporate office in Clarkson, NE called Gardenland. They stock many of their cold-hardy plants as well as trees, shrubs, annuals and more. I know this because my mother has worked at Gardenland for the past 30 years. Bluebird Nursery primarily ships to their wholesale customers but those interested in buying retail can stop in at Gardenland and tell Deb her daughter sent them! Thanks for your time.