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.