Spiders Aren’t Scary and Public Gardens Deserve Less Tomfoolery

“Even a cranky gnome will forgive the most outlandish tomfoolery during the festive times of Christmas month” ~ A Gnome’s Christmas by Rien Poortvliet

I grew up in the country and although no one in my family gardened, I became a career horticulturist. I am often envious of people in my field that learned about gardening from a relative. I learned in school and then in my own garden. School doesn’t teach you how to garden, only the science and the art behind gardening.

Don’t tell your kids I said this…

Some of the best gardeners and nurserymen I know don’t have degrees, they learned through doing. These nurserymen were taught by other gardeners, most likely relatives. For some of us, there was no generational hand-me-down of gardening tips. The skills and tricks for growing great gardens have been lost through the generations. Most of my generation (Gen X) suffers because our parents didn’t garden and they didn’t want to learn from their parents (who probably knew how to garden) because gardening wasn’t cool. It’s cool now, and that’s why so many people are looking for information and “how-to” for gardening.

There’s a huge push now for teaching kids to garden. Whether it be vegetables or more traditional gardens, schools and teachers are trying to engage young children and keep them interested in gardening. The problem is most teachers are near or about my age and they too missed the hand-me-down gardening tips, so they really need help to teach the children.

I help plan and assist in an after school garden club for 1st through 5th graders at my son’s school. I am always amazed when a child shrieks and runs away because we’ve found something as benign as a slug or daddy-longlegs spiders.

Why are they so afraid?

I was never afraid. I’m completely creeped out by the slime of a slug, but I’ve never been afraid. Who taught them to be afraid? Too often, I see parents of young children completely freaking out because there are bees at an outdoor event. They tell their children to stay away from bees because they will sting them.

This is partially true, but not such a good message to convey to children, especially with the decline in bee populations of late.

I used to have a Rottweiler dog named Kaiser. He was the sweetest dog ever, but people were taught to be afraid of Rotweillers, so whenever I would walk him, people would ask if they could pet him and more importantly…if he would bite. My standard reply was, “If you hurt me, he’ll bite you.” It was true.

Just like a bee, Kaiser might bite if someone tried to hurt him or me. He wouldn’t bite for any other reason. Bees protect their homes and themselves. If you step on one, it will sting you. A bee will never come after you just to sting. They must be provoked.

I hate when parents instill fear in their children. Why be fearful of spiders, bugs, snakes, and bees?

They are all good guys that we can’t live without. During our garden club sessions, we get some strange comments. Our garden contains vegetables and herbs and we have never used a chemical on anything. It’s organic. The whole point of having this garden is to show children where food comes from and engage them in gardening activities and that maybe they’ll like doing it so much that their families will start gardening at home. Some of the children have come to the after school club with strict instructions from their parents. Their parents tell them not to eat vegetables directly from the garden.

Good grief…it’s organic, people!

The whole point is to eat it off the vine and get the experience of it squishing in their mouths. Are these parents now afraid of food too?

I suppose they should be afraid of the food at supermarkets, but not here in the school’s organic vegetable garden. We are constantly debunking things like this and helping to educate the parents to assuage any parental fears. You know the kids didn’t come up with these rules. They want to eat the tomatoes off the vine.

What kind of world do we live in?  Ugh…

Children these days are also taught to fear spiders, bats and bees. There is no respect for the work they do to keep us safe and fed. We sit on our patio at dusk just to watch the bats zoom and zip through our yard. It’s super cool and the kids (2 and 7 years old) now know that bats eat mosquitos and they are our friends. I also purposefully surrounded our patio with Clethra virginiana ‘Hummingbird’ (summersweet) so we could watch the bees in the summer when it’s in full bloom. Summersweet attracts lots and lots of bees. We counted 7 different kinds of bees on these plants this summer. There’s no fear.

They do know not to grab the bees. We respect that they could sting, but we love watching them do their stuff.

There’s too much protection of kids these days. I blame the parents. (No offense to the parents reading this…I’m certain this is preaching to the choir.) Kids are protected so much that they have NO respect for nature.

Take the latest story coming out of the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle, WA titled “Rare Tree Stolen From Arboretum.” I don’t believe children took this, but I fear it was someone who just didn’t get the whole idea of respecting public gardens (or spaces for that matter).

That’s right, some non-respecting idiot went into the arboretum at night and cut down a tree for their holiday display. This was no ordinary tree, it was a rare, endangered conifer called Keteleeria evelyniana. The 7-foot conifer was one of the park’s rarest specimens, an imperiled species collected from the mountainous Yunnan province in China.

The park has one other specimen like this, but it was collected from a different area, so the genetics are not equivalent. It is likely impossible they could ever find a genetically equivalent specimen. Growing endangered plants in parks and nurseries around the world provides a plant-like ark that could someday be used to create new populations if those plants do become extinct.

To quote my friend, Becky Long when I posted the story about this tree on Facebook:

“I see some angry, possibly drunk husband forced to go get a tree… the wife probably took one look at it and made him throw it away. What a waste!”

I’m sure she’s right, but still, there’s a lack of respect for the property, the tree and if Becky’s assumption is right…perhaps the wife.

The people who did this certainly had no respect for the Washington Park Arboretum. They had no respect for public property. Just because it is a public garden, do you think what’s there is yours to take?

Really? Seriously? An arboretum is not a tree farm, people!

They thought they could just walk in and in a Clark Griswold-esque sort of way saw down a tree to take home?

Are you kidding me?

Did their parents forget to teach them to respect public property? I assume their parents didn’t teach them to respect the work being done by public gardens to catalog rare and endangered plants so that we can see them long after they are extinct. That’s too much to ask and only children of a horticulturist would know that. Would they have gone into the zoo and taken an exotic animal for a pet?

I certainly hope not.

I swear…plants (and bees) get no respect.

Until next week…

Happy Weeding.

Angela Treadwell Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau

P.S. Speaking of respect, or lack there of…I’d like to talk about astilbes for a minute. Delft Lace

I have killed many astilbes in my gardening life. It’s quite simple actually. Astilbes need water. If you forget to water them, they’ll die. Easy enough, right? Well…they need a lot of water to get established and ideally, they should be planted in rich, organic soil with consistent moisture. It’s the consistency that I lack in my garden and I’m assuming this is a problem for most. I have had much success with a new astilbe called, Delft Lace, from AB-Cultivars in The Netherlands.

I’ve had this one for three years now and although I killed the first crop because I planted them too late and we had an awful drought right after I planted them, I have easily kept this selection alive ever since.

When I saw this selection for the first time in 2006 in The Netherlands, I was I awe not of it’s blooms, but of it’s deep blueish-green foliage. The foliage was so dark that it appeared almost purple and then there was the lacey overlay. It was to die for. The foliage will actually turn eggplant purple if it is planted in more sun. My plant hunting mind instantly thought, if astilbes looked pretty after they bloomed, we could sell even more.

Hmm…this astilbe truly does look pretty after it blooms. The foliage is so attractive, I would suggest you grow it in your moist(er) shady spots just for the foliage. The blooms are a lovely shade of clear peachy-pink and they add to the beauty of this plant for sure, but unlike most other selections, this plant is more than fluffy plumes for two to three weeks in May. Much more…