Failure

Books on 'How to succeed' fill entire shelves in libraries and bookstores. This post is not about that. It is about what our garden can teach us about failure - or the converse - thriving.

All gardeners face failure in their endeavours at growing. We kill plants for a variety of reasons - too much water, too little, too much shade, too much sun. The ground is too hard, or the hole too deep. Because we went away on holiday. Disease and insects. Bunnies and squirrels.

Gardens are a lot like lives - they have boundaries that are real limitations. We face limitations through birth, family money, education, disposition, health circumstances, life events, and a variety of structural and other impacts.

There are things one can accomplish in a space like Duke Gardens that cannot be attempted in a small back yard. And yet there are small gardens everywhere that are full of richness and which feed the souls of the people living there. This is not an apologia for a 'small life'. Rather, regardless of the space we have, it is possible to be intentional about what we grow and to thrive despite limitations. We can be beautiful, despite circumstances.

In life, there are examples of people who have succeeded despite insurmountable odds. For most of us, as inspiring as these accounts are, repeating it is statistically unlikely. Gardens show us that plants in the right place do well. Try planting lavender in a forest and you'll be doing it every year. They need sun. Again, this is not an argument for being average. The point is that should you be gregarious, outgoing, and enjoy talking, a solitary job in the basement of a building is unlikely to feed you.

One of the classes I teach is how to propagate plants from cuttings. I've used a number of plants in my garden for this. I've learned how to turn the raw material from seasonal pruning into many new plants. I've also learned that the huge, vibrant,  lorapetalum in my garden doesn't like my methods. I've tried multiple ways. Hundreds of attempts have produced just one plant.

Business majors will be taught something called the 'sunk cost fallacy'. In short, learn when to cut your losses. Don't keep throwing good money - or time, or resources - after bad. While others may have massive success with propagating lorapetalum from cuttings, if I want more of that bush in my back yard, I have to do it differently. Now, I get new bushes by bending some bottom branches through a channel in the ground with the end sticking out. The branch eventually roots, and once it's vigorous, I cut the connection to the original bush and dig up the offspring. It takes a year or so, so it's not exactly quick, and it produces only much smaller numbers.  But I get a new plant and I'm not wasting time and energy that can be better spent elsewhere failing repeatedly by doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

Failure with propagating plants has taught me lessons on methods and technique, and the lorapetalum has taught me other things entirely, including patience.

I've learned similar lessons from other plants. In the heat and humidity of North Carolina summers, my tomatoes have struggled with wilt and blight. I discovered that falling rain splashing on the soil is the problem. I now mulch my tomatoes with shredded office paper. This solves two problems. It allows me to shred the records dating back 10 years to comply with the IRS rules.  And it provides a sterile layer of mulch that's biodegradable in a single season. I've also learned that if you use shredded office paper with onions, it promotes pests. The old adage of 'if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail' applies equally to mulch.

Gardens reward our stewardship. Spaces can be transformed into places of beauty with time and stewardship. In turn, this stewardship transforms us. It allows us to move and bend and also to sit and rest. It can feed our eyes and body and soul. And the failures of one season can be revisited in the next with new ideas. 

Picture: Cumin (right) struggling in a raised bed.  In year 1, a bed directly seeded produced nothing. In year 2 transplanted seeds have limped along.  I suspect they need to be grown in a hoop house, where they are not affected by wind.