Xan's Darwinian Chicago Garden

Name: Xan Nelson

Website: My Folia/gardener/Xan, Mahlzeit

Location: Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood

Size: 1800 sq feet

Age: 22 years

Bio: I’m an artist, a gardener, and a crazy old lady (not that old, but pretty crazy) with pink hair. I also teach figure skating and my day job is in fundraising for the arts. Lately I’ve been volunteering for the Peterson Garden Project in Chicago.  I started gardening a couple of years after we bought our house because I had this big bare backyard (the prior owners just had grass) and I thought, well flowers would be pretty. 20 or so years later it consumes me. I’m now very active in online gardening communities like MyFolia, Garden Bloggers, Twitter gardenchat. If someone can figure out how to make this my job, I’m listening.

Garden Survey:

Type: Overflowing. I have about 700 square feet of shrubs and perennials and 500 square feet of edibles/herbs in a Chicago backyard (30x60 feet). The lawn is down to paths between the beds. It’s full sun, as I have only one small wild apple tree and my neighbors’ trees don’t really shade me, which is great.

Style: I refer to myself as a “Darwinian” gardener—it’s strictly survival of the fittest out there. If a plant gives me too much trouble, it’s toast.  Right now I’m looking with evil intent at a couple of rose bushes.

Inspiration: My garden is my art; I was a working artist (the kind that actually makes money at it) when I was a young woman. Circumstances ended that career, and now the garden is my canvas.

Favorite plant: The kind that grow in the ground. I don’t have a favorite.  Every time I try to choose, I’ll think, oh but there’s that other one too, I like that too. Quick association? Corn, Horsetail rush, mixed perennials in bright colors.

Biggest challenge: Having to work for a living, plus the constant suspicion that I don’t really know what I’m dong. Also, marauding rabbits. I also can’t keep a houseplant thriving to save my life (or its).

What friends say: Jaws drop.

Biggest embarrassment: Stuff I don’t know. I’ve been gardening for almost a quarter century, and yet still I’ll find out something that every gardener seems to, or should, know. I just absorb the info and pretend I knew that already.

Proudest DIY: My entire life is DIY—I make it all up as I go along. But if you’re talking about building stuff, I am the world’s most disastrous DIYer. The term makeshift doesn’t begin to cover my incompetence. I make my husband and kids put in all the important stuff; they built a pond and a wall, several paths, a trellis, a flagstone patio, and installed three rain barrels.  I put in the little brick wall that keeps falling over.

Biggest indulgence: Gardening when I have other things I really should be doing.

Best advice: Don’t be afraid to get started.  Plants have been growing without our help for tens of millions of years. They’ll do just fine whether you know what you’re doing or not. For American backyard gardeners really nothing is at stake—if your garden fails, you can go to the grocery store (but when the Apocalypse comes, you’ll know how to feed yourself!)

Resources: I really love Urhausen Greenhouse in Lincolnwood for plants, and Lurvey’s in DesPlaines, which is better than the Botanic Gardens in some ways, and almost as big. For seeds, I like to swap. I like to go to my local Ace or True Value for tools (I try to stay out of national chains, as a matter of philosophy). Seed swapping is so much fun, both for the variety of seeds you can find and for the friends you meet that it inspired me to finally get serious about seed saving.

Garden Tour:

Xan - thanks for participating.  Loved it!

If you would like to participate in Virtual Garden Tours, please email me at myskinnygarden (at) gmail (dot) com.