Bushleaguer’s Garden Club
As printed in the Hampshire Gazette
I am never doing this again.
Over the years I have picked some cool, drizzly days for the Bushleaguer’s Garden Club Plant Exchange but we always managed to divide up the plants and move inside before it was too miserable. This time people keep calling to say it is too cold and too wet and don’t I want to wait for a better day? Hey - I just spent all week getting ready for this, cleaning the house, weeding, digging up extra plants and shoving them into pots. The cookies are out, the dips are made, the tea is hot, and the beer is cold. I have 50 plants sitting outside waiting for new homes and there is no way the garden or the house will stay this orderly for a whole week. Don’t they know that drizzly days are the best ones for transplanting?
Then it really starts to rain. Blinding, torrential downpour.
That’s it. I am going to cancel this whole thing. No one is coming anyway. My husband David is more rational than I am. "We can do this" he assures me. He puts the extra leaves in the dining room table, covers it with plastic, and starts to haul dripping pots into the house. He greets the few people who brave the storm, and in his orange raincoat and golf umbrella carries their plants from the flooded driveway, over the soggy sidewalk into the muddy dining room.
The original Bushleaguers are friends of mine from high school, but the plant exchange has grown to include other friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and any other gardeners I find along the way. My friend Janice’s husband comes for the snacks and to keep David company. My brother Mark comes to see some old friends. One year, a native of Great Britain spent more time talking to my husband about his and her mother’s, homebrewed beer and English pubs than she did looking at plants.
We don’t have any rules. That’s one rule I offer if you want to hold your own exchange. If you have extra plants, dig them up and bring them along. If you don’t, come anyway and take some home. It’s great to have the same people back year after year, but new guests bring different plants we may not already have in our gardens. Somebody’s dad heard about our exchange and attends every year with a trunkload of hostas, ajuga and violets. He is trying to get rid of extra plants because his garden is already too full, but his wife Mary manages to sneak home a few pots of new varieties.
By the condition of the plants they bring, you can guess how someone’s home or desk looks. Some are potted up neatly and individually tagged, looking like they just came from the nursery. Some come rolled up in newspapers or plopped into cardboard boxes. This year, there’s a bucket of lilac and hydrangea shoots sitting on the front steps. I tend to dig up chunks of plants and shove them into leftover pots with a note "blue bee balm – I have more if you want." Perilla, a nice purple-leaved Japanese basil, is an annual that seeds itself in my garden. I spoon some of the hundreds of seedlings into little paper cups and try to get everyone to take at least one home.
Once everyone is inside, we start walking around the table, poking plants, reading labels or asking "what’s this?" My "Taylor’s Guide to Perennials" is out so we can look up pictures and planting requirements. This year I have Gazebo software loaded up on my computer, and we can hear the correct pronunciation of the Latin names of over 500 plants. Some gardening friends only know the common names for plants, or nothing more than that a favorite has pink flowers and grows really tall. Others are pretty familiar with the Latin names and growing habits. One of our regular guests, a farmer by trade, knows the Latin names and correct pronunciation of every garden plant you can grow in this area. One or two people find that annoying but I am awed by her botanical expertise. I am aware that if I don’t know the botanical name of a plant it is much harder to find in a catalog since common names vary by region.
Once everyone has checked out the selection, the exchange starts in earnest. We’re very civilized, nothing like the annual Amherst Garden Club Plant Sale, where you scope out the choicest plant and grab it when the bell rings. We politely claim our plants, making sure that nobody else wants one more than we do before we move it to our corner. If there is a plant that two people have their eye, on we divide it. On nicer days, I walk around the yard, shovel in hand, pointing out plants that I am willing to dig up. This can be awkward if someone has their eye on a plant that I am reluctant to share. It’s not that I’m selfish, but some plants are expensive, take a long time to grow, don't divide well, or have a sentimental meaning. I try to tell them, gracefully, that I can’t dig that one up, but that they are easy to find at Andrew’s Greenhouse, in Amherst, or Blue Meadow Farm, in Montague, if they really want one.
This year, not one Bushleaguer came. Other commitments or bad weather kept them away. But a neighbor who had never been able to make it before is here with her sister-in-law and she brought a really nice achillea, "Coronation Gold", that I have my eye on. Three friends from work, one retired, one from my old department, one from my new one, are here. My friend’s dad wasn’t feeling well, but he still sent a trunkload of plants. It’s too raw to go outside and show off my newly weeded gardens and my daffodils.
But, for about two hours, my dining room is alive with people moving pots of dirt and green from one corner of the room to another, talking about their gardens, their families, their work, eating, drinking, laughing.
I finally got out in the yard yesterday to cut down last year’s plants and see how this year’s are doing as spring begins. I noticed that the Siberian irises need dividing, and noted that when I put in that rock garden, the asters and coreopsis are going to need a new home.
When the Bushleaguers got together a few weeks ago someone asked when the exchange will be. Janice’s dad is feeling better and there are five new names on my list of fellow gardeners. I picked a date and sent out the invitations. I have about two weeks to clean the house and weed the yard. David will make the beer and Suzanne’s mom will send cookies. I can’t wait.