Nano-Gardening at SRC: Reflections of a nature lover

Eclipse of the Sun, Auburn NY, April 8, 2024

NANO-GARDENING in a MACRO-REGULATION ENVIRONMENT

August 1, 2008

When the Cusins were investigating senior retirement communities, Sue always asked about possibilities for a garden plot. At Serene Retirement Community, she was assured by Marketing that individual small gardens were very likely. They didn't promise, of course, since the facility was still under construction, but Keith emphasized the “very”. After all, the SRC sister-community in Oregon had such garden plots. “Great”, Sue thought, for she had gardening in her bones. She had grown up with a father who even cross-pollinated iris and divided and labeled the resulting rhizomes, while her mother kept arrangements of cut flowers constantly throughout the house. Before they moved to SRC, the Cusins had a large, magnificent garden. She, Sue, carried a long list of “must plant” annuals and perennials around in her head. Sun and water and dirt! She needed them as most people need nutrients.

Well after they had done the wrenching downsizing from their spacious home to their apartment at SRC, leaving her Japanese maples and New Zealand tree ferns, her dahlias, her tulips, her gladiolas, her rhododendrons, her azaleas, her asters and zinnias, her petunias and marigolds - well it turned out there would be no individual garden plots. All available land was needed for bocci ball courts or green lawns or picnic tables.

Sue, therefore, focused on the six by ten foot cement porch of their ground floor apartment, cramming the space with variously sized planter containers. This would have to be her gardening niche a nano-garden.

She discovered several things in the first few months of such gardening. First, the porch of the 2nd floor apartment completely shaded her planting space. Never before had she worked in dense shade; some of her garden had been in light shadow, the sunlight filtered by tree branches but not with complete absence of direct sunlight. Now she adjusted and grew cyclamen, impatiens,  begonias and leggy geraniums.

Second, there was no water faucet available and her requests for one were turned down, so she had to carry all water for every plant across their living room. Do the math! With ten pounds per watering can times 365 days per year (no rain could reach our pots through the porch above) times “n”, an integer since on warmer days two, three, or even more trips were required to service all plants, divided by 2000 pounds per ton--that was a bottom line showing her having to schlep somewhere from 1.8 tons to over 5.4 tons of water every year

Sue had been on the Landscape Committee when the Cusins first moved in. At this time there was not any planting around their building. She called their view either the “Gobi Desert” or the “Great Salt Lake”  depending on the season. She had asked the then-director, Jim, on a landscape planning tour of the site, if she could plant a few things under their window. In no uncertain terms he said that it was not permitted as “there’s a regulation that all external features must be the same and provided by SRC”.  In violation of this rule, Scott Cusins, in the dead of night, had dug in three dozen King Arthur daffodils the first year no one objected when their bright yellow head started bobbing in the spring breezes so he did it again the next year even after official landscape architect foundation plantings appeared he labored subversively clandestinely but with his results applauded by sue and lots of other residents.

Encouraged by the lack of regulation enforcement, Sue began to move some potted plants into the forbidden sunlight areas off of their porch. One fall, she scattered California Poppy seeds between the approved institutionally planted oleander and flax plants. The landscaping service unfortunately tossed pre-emergent weed killer over the same territory. That spring two lonely poppy plants, nestled beneath protective oleander branches, manage to flaunt their orange velvet flowers. Their existence was a small but distinct victory over rigid rules.

The opening of their porch might provide a third dimension for vegetation, Sue thought.  Scott rigged up a trellis arrangement and she tried growing sweet peas in pots. They climbed but bloomed sparsely --only semi successful. Then she bought two  bare root tree roses, which, she reasoned, would bloom above the porch railing.

All went well for a while. But then the lush new growth on the port side of the roses began to wither in the shade from powdery mildew. A systemic soil additive helped, but eventually all the house-side branches died, even as those reaching into the sunshine prospered and produced fragrant blooms The Cusins saw bleak dead wood from their window and could only see rose blossoms if they drove by on the street. Sue reluctantly through out the two roses. Since all trash (like the water) had to be carried through their living room, Sue cut and bagged the thorny branches, whether dead or alive, and managed to complete the task with only four scratches worth band aids.

Now she refilled the pots with good soil (carefully carried through the living room) and tried clematis vines. They like cool roots and sunlight leaves. This seems to be working and there are now both scarlet and pale blue star-shaped flowers gracing the trellis.

At the moment, the Cusins are enjoying their foliage-filled porch and also the illicit pots of blooms on the common area. If Sue is told to remove her containers, she plans to move them temporarily inside to a seldom used bathtub where they can be watered. She believes she can wait out any enforcer of regulations since directors seemed to change with the seasons.