My Secret Garden

With apologies to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, I have one too. Mine is quite public, though. It just holds some secrets. I have several small gardens in my urban landscape, and all of them are…well…public. I like them that way because they allow me to meet people in a natural way, instead of attending networking events or parties. Suffice it to say I have attended lots of both but for me neither is a great setting for meeting people, especially one’s neighbors. Gardening is perfect if you want to get to know who lives around you.

My most public garden faces a busy street and is really an easement. I got tired of both looking at boring grass and the upkeep of mowing and watering. So I decided about 10 years ago that this rather large rectangular strip would hold Texas natives. In all honesty, the biggest secret of this public garden, which is no secret to any Texas gardener, is that some of the plants growing there are not natives. They are naturalized, however, and thus are quite comfortable sharing the hot dry summers with the natives. So I still call it my native garden and so far no one has wanted to split hairs.

Now to get to the point: Even though this garden is quite public, it harbors many secrets. For example, the history of some of the plants. One is a large showing of purple coneflowers. They came from a neighbor who was quite eccentric and called them “pink daisies.” She apparently gave the seeds to several people in the neighborhood because I see her pink daisies everywhere. She died some years ago, but I think of her often thanks to her generous gifts. (She also left some onion dip at my door once, and at another time, some potato soup mix. I thought this very odd and imagined the dip to be spiked with something, but in fact it was quite delicious and none of the people who ate it felt ill effects from eating it.)

Another secret, or perhaps an “unsecret”: I was quaffing a cup of coffee on the patio early one morning when a woman I do not know swiped a piece of pink skullcap from the garden. The street the garden faces is a popular walking trail, and she barely broke a stride as she snipped. In fact I believe her actions were premeditated, because the stem of the skullcap is pretty woody and the woman would need very strong fingers and sharp fingernails to pinch the stem in two. I believe she was packing scissors. Her action startled me enough to choke a bit in mid-sip. And sort of laugh in surprised delight. As I told a friend later, I’ve given away many cuttings of plants in the public “secret” garden and would have given her one -– even one with roots, had she asked.

Many a tidbit of interest has been passed to me in the garden. I’ve learned political affiliations, how marriages are doing, where kids are going to college and who is ill. It’s apparent that people feel freer talking in the secret garden than in other places. After all, everyone needs someone to talk to, and plants don’t spread your secrets...nor have I.

I’ve thought more about the garden over the years, and I have decided that it’s truly for the public. So I don’t really mind if people snitch pieces of plant. Not that this is an invitation to plunder. But as I told someone recently, who wondered about dogs in it (and yes, I have found evidence of both canine and feline visits), I planted the garden with the public in mind, and that includes four-footed visitors too. Although I would consider it a personal kindness if two-footers would pick up after their four-footers. It’s just being polite, ya’ll.

The author writers fiction for young adults. See more of her work at www.mudpiepress.com