The Cheap and Lazy Maximalist Gardener

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal grabbed my attention because it was a piece about gardening. 

Showing us the home of Katie Ridder, an interior designer with a "more is more" signature style, we see her loose, but deliberate, approach to her landscape as being the same wild, colorful abundance associated with English cottage gardens. Describing herself as a "maximalist" designer, she ignored practical advice about choosing a manageable number of plants, and plunged in with an initial purchase of 1,000 items of 65 different species. 

Is there such a thing as a maximalist gardener? The term "maximalist" was initially coined in the early 20th Century to describe all-or-nothing Russian revolutionaries. Now, in its broader use, it describes an uncompromising approach of "redundant overkill" for maximum impact, or an all-in plan of attack towards a goal. 

I find it a perfectly fitting term for gardeners like Ms. Ridder and me. We are maximalist gardeners. Except I'm a cheap and lazy one.

I inherited a 40X40' kitchen garden, divided into four quadrants, with a fountain at the center of flagstone pathways. In addition to a cherry tree and a few blueberry bushes, the space was full of day lilies, black-eyed susans, hedge roses, purple lobelia, wild geraniums, ferns, trumpet vine - and weeds. 

My vision for the garden was that it would be a cross between a kitchen garden and an English cottage garden - a maximal explosion of color and function. But because it's expensive and back-breaking to start from scratch, I did the opposite of Ridder's maximalist approach of buying a thousand new plants. I left everything in place and simply added more. 

I smothered the weeds and trumpet vine in one quadrant with cardboard and mulched leaves, erected an herb spiral, (constructed from limb leftovers of a tree that we cut down), and added plants. It became my herb and medicinal garden, with thyme, basil, chamomile, feverfew, arnica, chives, dill, mustard greens, and mint. 

A word about mint: Seasoned gardeners will shake their heads and say, "Mint is invasive and takes over the whole plot!" This is true, and is exactly why invasive herbs are a lazy maximalist gardener's dream. 

Basil mint from a 3-inch pot, taking up 6X6' of space within a year.

Anything that I like to eat is welcome to stretch out in my garden until it bumps into a neighbor that I also want. That's when I assume a traffic cop role, yanking out chunks of the exuberant plant to give the right of way to the other favorite. 

Being cheap, my new plants came from seeds that I collected from the previous year or the leftover plants I picked up at big box store garden centers. I have a weekly ritual of buying up the withering remains of perennials that can't be sold by those stores. Left on a clearance table to die, they're perfect for me to scoop up in bulk and put into a hospital corner of my garden. Then I simply wait for them to come back the next year.

My lazy compost-making means that I spread it prematurely, and there are always seeds that will provide volunteer vegetables somewhere in the garden. I let them grow. Grape tomatoes pop up everywhere, so you can pluck a few to eat as you walk by to check out the roses. My columbine and snapdragons this year were bullied by a few acorn squash vines that blew into their space, but I got dozens of squash blossoms to stuff and bake, and about 20 mature squashes to roast and pickle.

Is my maximalist garden pretty? Well, that depends on whether or not you're a maximalist viewer. If you prefer neatly tended spaces, with flowering plants framed by burnt sienna mulch, and vegetables lined up together without intrusive weeds, my garden might remind you of the median strip on a major highway. 

But if you love the idea of walking on that median strip, curious to see what's growing among the wildflowers, and excited by the surprise of edibles that you can take home for your salad, then follow me. My cheap, lazy maximalist garden is for you.

Lilies growing among rudbeckia.

How to Win the Renovation Game Show

What can retired couples do when they finally have the time for whatever they want?

Some downsize towards a simpler life and more freedom. Some travel and explore the world they never had time to see before. Others volunteer or take a class together. 

Kathy and Bob, the Upsized Boomers, renovate.

To be honest, retirement has not brought this out in us. We always bought ugly duckling homes at rock bottom prices, when the word "flipped" referred to pancakes, not houses. This house will be our sixth renovation in 33 years. It was Bob's retirement project to buy it and make the major repairs that are inevitable with a 110-year old house. It's our joint project to bring the kitchen and master bath into the 21st Century.

If you watch any of the fixer-upper shows on HGTV, or have renovated your house in the past, you'll know what I mean when I say that it can feel like being on a perverse game show where you not only get to play, you also end up paying out the jackpot. With our current project, we passed quickly through the initial Your Bottom Line Budget is Delusionally Low audition, worked well together during the Cut $20,000 More challenge, and blew through the Bad News About Structural Defects That Will Add Back That $20,000 scoring. In this moment, we're negotiating the It's Going to Take An Extra Three Weeks bonus round.

Having learned the rules through years of trial and error, here's my advice for anyone who thinks that now's the time to play your own Renovation Game Show:

1. Retirement does not convey skills or knowledge that you never had before.  If your previous attempts at this game failed because you thought you could do it yourself, and one or both of you 1) hated manual labor, 2) didn't know the difference between a plumber and a plumb line, and/or 3) lost patience with making 1,000 decisions that all seemed to do with something called "finishes", be honest with yourself. Your new life of retirement can only possibly change problem #2, because you'll have time to watch fixer-upper shows, expand your reno vocabulary, and throw around words like shiplap.

2. The rules of the game remain the same if you downsize. Congratulations on selling your big house and moving to your new town home! You might be thinking that the renovation game will be easier with a smaller space. That's like thinking that house training a small dog will certainly be less complicated than house training a big one. The reality is that each project has its unique opportunities and limits that only emerge as you go through the process. Please refer back to my previous paragraph - substituting the words, "A smaller project" for "Retirement" - if you didn't like the game in the past.

3. The Renovation Game is won with teamwork. Renovation upends your entire life. It's costly, dusty, tedious, and anxiety-producing. It can feel like a marathon with an imaginary finish line and a course that keeps changing direction. Whether you're doing the work yourself or hired a company to handle the project, a team approach will get you through it. 

4. The Renovation Game really isn't a game at all. It's creation. It's art. Go into it with the shared goal of feeling joy every day in your space. Keep that in mind when you have to make hundreds of decisions and navigate the compromises that are inevitable. 

Here's the payoff: If you take a dream trip around the world, you go home with memories. If the home you create is your dream, you get to live in your dream every day.