Time to slow down

Slow Gar­den­ing to the res­cue! An old con­cept with a new face, now known as Slow Gar­den­ing was brought to the fore­front by gar­den author Felder Rush­ing with the release of his new book, Slow Gar­den­ing, a Non-stop Phi­los­o­phy for all Senses and Seasons.

Accord­ing to Felder, Slow Gar­den­ing is a philo­soph­i­cal approach to gar­den­ing which encour­ages par­tic­i­pants to savor every­thing they do, using all the senses, through all the sea­sons, regard­less of gar­den type or style. Slow Gar­den­ing is an atti­tude, not a “how-to” list of things to do, or not to do. Visit his new web­site at slowgardening.net

Slow Gar­den­ing was adapted from the Slow Food move­ment, which started in Italy in the 1980’s by Carlo Petrini as a result of foods and prod­ucts dis­ap­pear­ing from our envi­ron­ment and spurred on by the open­ing of a McDonald’s at the Span­ish Steps in Rome. Slow Food has chap­ters around the world, and in the US there are approx­i­mately 200 indi­vid­ual chap­ters, includ­ing one in Colum­bus. You can visit the national web­site at: slowfoodusa.org and Colum­bus at slowfoodcolumbus.org. After meet­ing with Carlo Petrini in Italy, Felder took on the task of cre­at­ing a new move­ment known as Slow Gardening.

With all the pres­sures of daily life, don’t add more to your list by hav­ing com­pli­cated gar­dens. We can keep it sim­ple and easy to make it more enjoy­able. Don’t con­fuse Slow Gar­den­ing with low main­te­nance; it has much more to do with your pas­sions. Yours may be herbs, top­i­aries, or suc­cu­lents. The pas­sion is yours to define and savor.

The con­cept is to enjoy your gar­den more by being kinder to the envi­ron­ment, be less com­pet­i­tive for that per­fect lawn or gar­den and on occa­sion enjoy your efforts on a chaise lounge under a tree. We tend to go full speed for months to get the gar­den look­ing just the right way, then end up being burnt out by the end of the sea­son, only to start it all again in the spring. A cycle that most of us would be hap­pier without.

Some rela­tion­ships can be made with using natives, low main­te­nance plants and grow­ing plants for our Zone 5 region. We’ve drifted from ‘local gar­den­ing’ to push­ing the enve­lope with plants meant for Zone 6 and beyond. I am guilty of that by hav­ing banana trees, an olive tree and other tropical’s in my yard. My friend calls it zonal denial. We always want what oth­ers have.

We are con­stantly look­ing for and read­ing about the new col­ors and vari­eties of our favorite plants. New tools in the mar­ket some­times meant to make our lives eas­ier, only end up com­pli­cat­ing it. When my grand­mother gar­dened she didn’t have 3 or 4 trow­els to pick from, or a vari­ety of shov­els and hoes. She had one of each. Her gar­dens were beau­ti­ful and much less complicated.

Some of Felder’s ideas for slow­ing down are:

• Right plant, right place — choose pest-resistant plants well-adapted to your local cli­mate and soils, plant them well, and let them grow with­out being pushed. Try untested new plants in a small area.
• Care­fully select and dis­play sculp­ture or other gar­den art, for all-year inspi­ra­tion. Visit Felder’s web­site at felderrushing.net for his selec­tions of art and bot­tle trees.
• Grow your own fruit. Make pre­serves to share with others.
• Lose some of the lawn, mak­ing edges and cor­ners eas­ier to mow with less back­ing up. Lighten up on the fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides, enjoy a few wildflowers.
• Install a fire pit and water­fall, and use them as occa­sional relief from television.
• When prac­ti­cal, use quiet hand tools over noisy power equip­ment. Keep dig­ging and cut­ting tools sharp and efficient.
• Get per­sonal with your weather — use a rain gauge and out­door thermometer.
• Enjoy the sun — put up a small clothes­line for favorite T-shirts, and make sun tea.
• Gar­den to encour­age year-round wildlife. Include a well-stocked bird feeder.
• Shop at a farm­ers’ mar­ket for in-season, locally-grown produce.
• Take advan­tage of area gar­den lec­tures, sem­i­nars, and shows.

As Steve Ben­der, senior gar­den edi­tor for South­ern Liv­ing mag­a­zine says, “Maybe you can’t change the whole world. But by slightly mod­i­fy­ing the way you gar­den, you can change your own back yard. And that’s a start.”

Susan Liechty is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Oct 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.