This week there has practically been a civil war amongst garden bloggers over a post written on Garden Rant. I was disturbed by the post when I read it. And I hated the way it made me feel about the author and the commenters who supported her view that our ugly gardens are giving "respectable vegetable gardeners" a bad name. I say "our" because I'm one of the ugly garden people, too. Just look at the picture of my kitchen garden down in the lower left column of my blog page. That straw and that bag of weeds has been there since last summer. *gasp* The picture on the left is my 2009 garden in full production.
When I started my garden back in the summer of 2007, I did so in the exact manner that the Garden Ranter warned against. I thought about it for about 5 minutes. Then I rushed out to Home Depot and bought a bunch of plants I knew nothing about growing. I planted cantaloupe and watermelon in the same space as my tomatoes and herbs. And I spent the entire summer trying to keep the cantaloupe and watermelon from strangling the other plants. But guess what? I had fun! And I grew the best cantaloupe I've ever tasted in my life. Did you notice the vine that looked like cantaloupe that had escaped through the fence in the picture on the Garden Rant article? I know how that happens because the same thing happened to me. It doesn't mean I'm stupid or sloppy or lazy. And I doubt that the person whose ugly garden was used for that photo will ever make that mistake again.
I'm not a designer. I probably don't look at my garden through an artful eye. It's not that I set out to have an ugly garden, it's just that I'm not that good at designing. The ugly garden post made it seem like we are completely unconcerned with the way our garden looks, when in reality, we place plants the best way we know how. Maybe we focus more on companion planting instead of planting pretty. Maybe those ugly gardens are the best we can do.
I don't have a lot of money to hire a professional garden designer or to buy big fancy tomato cages. Last year I had 18 tomato plants. If I'd bought the Texas Tomato Cages I really wanted, it would have cost me $300. I couldn't afford that. Does that mean I should have reduced the number of tomato plants I grew to, say, 3, so that I could afford the big fancy tomato cages? Hell no! I tied them up with wood stakes the best I could. And they fell down. And my garden was a hot mess. And I still canned nearly 30 jars of marinara sauce, salsa and pizza sauce. And my family loved it because I grew all the ingredients, and because it tasted fabulous. I also kept several people in my tomato giving circle stocked with organic cherry and slicing tomatoes all summer. That felt really good.
I think of all the comments in the Garden Rant post, the one about the "cheap Walmart tomato cages" stung the most. Because we gardeners know that it is difficult to find good sturdy tomato cages that don't break the bank. If the author was trying to help, like she sort of insinuated, a better tactic might have been to suggest where we could buy better tomato cages on our modest salaries. That's information that would have been useful to me.
If you are new to gardening and you're overly concerned with your vegetable garden being pretty enough, your'e not going to learn. Those weeds? Those misplaced plants? They are all lessons. In a comment posted later by the author of the Garden Rant post, she said that we'd all missed her whole point. That she was really referring to vegetable gardens that get planted, then never touched again. Do you know any of those gardens? I don't. What I do know about are gardens that improve year after year. Like mine. My first vegetable garden was 8 feet wide, in rows. And yes I couldn't walk through it and it sucked. But I learned a lot about garden design and plant spacing that year. All painful but valuable lessons that I needed to be able to manage my vegetable garden.
What I don't understand is why garden bloggers feel the need to make these polarizing types of blog posts and statements. I am assuming it is for the page views or whatever other thing the publicity might bring. I hope it's worth it. But it my opinion, that's not very "respectable." And I believe these types of things are giving garden bloggers a bad name.
There are many of us vegetable gardeners who believe in gardening the best you can. If your garden happens to be beautiful, too, that's great. But take it from me, even if it's just a big ole mess, you will still love it and you will still be proud of it. And the food you grow will still taste amazing!
If you are a garden blogger, I encourage you to show off your so called ugly gardens like Colleen did over at
In The Garden Online. I was so inspired by her post that I decided to write my own.
More Ugly Gardens
Jessica's ugly garden
Julia's ugly garden
Carri's ugly garden
Jodi's ugly garden
Tina's ugly garden
Kat's ugly garden
Fern's ugly balcony garden
