Casey & Co. Client Reflects on First Spring with New Garden

By this time of year, the miracle of rebirth that is spring is almost forgotten. The delicate show of snowbells pushing through the drab landscape, swaths of sun-colored forsythia shocking us awake, and the spectacle of cherry blossoms is on the wane. All the trees begin to erupt into leaf and the extraordinariness of that liminal time when earth moves from sleeping to bursting with life passes into the new ordinary. As the plants become established, it becomes easier to take this vibrancy for granted.

I say this because this is my first spring living with a new garden, and I am surprised to note that the moods and peculiar habits that gripped me in early spring are loosening their control, giving way to a more confident, blasé perspective so at odds with the heightened awareness and cares of pre-bloom me. The mystery of tending a garden is perhaps never as acute as in the early spring and with it comes uncertainty and expectation: will your ship come in?

Every morning at dawn, full of anticipation, I go out to communicate with the plants. Now they are well on their way, and it is easy to imagine that it was meant to be.

For any garden lover, spring is always a revelation; this is doubly so when one has created a new garden. Seeing signs of growth is akin to watching a painting emerge slowly before your eyes. The observer is called upon to exercise patience, even as the imagination is pumping out ideas to fill in the space defined by the early arrivals. In early spring, the growing garden is a soul-stirring source of surprise and awe. So, the other day, as I thrilled at the discovery of yet more batches of new hostas, astilbes, and caramel-colored heucheras emerging in the early morning light, I was equally aware of how much blind luck went into my being able to savor this new garden now. An essential part of my luck was finding, after many months of searching and meetings with prospective providers, the right person and team to work with to install a new garden. Gardening can represent a major investment; in researching landscaping teams, I was looking for someone with expertise, ability to deliver both on time, within budget, and perhaps most importantly someone with the communication skills and imagination to be able to support me in developing my own vision of the garden. These past weeks of savoring the new space that has been created in our backyard and reveling in the colorful success of the varieties of flora as they make their irrepressible debuts, I have also had reason to look back on my moments of hesitation, doubt, uncertainty, and to feel the relief and gratitude of pushing ahead with the program. Casey & Co. made this resolve possible. The team was consistently responsive, clear minded, expert at their craft and good listeners. After a few collaborative meetings and measuring practicalities, I was presented with a thorough plan for the garden that met our budget. We made a few refinements, and then waited on availability of the best plant materials.

Everything, save some established trees and the stone pathway, came out of the garden. The soil was amended and reinvigorated, and then the planting began. The space opened up, the light in the garden shifted, and this outdoor room was made alive with possibility.

Then came winter.

The plants went to sleep and the garden went into suspension. The undertaking entered that stage rich in uncertainty, promise and mystery: what will happen in the spring? What will survive and thrive? How might it look and work together?

As I walked through the garden early morning, whispering to the plants my appreciation of their miraculous properties and beauty (another Georgetowner wrote a book in the seventies about talking to plants…), I thought to write to Casey; I wanted to thank her for this display of life she so expertly helped me to create at our home, and how her own steadfast nature in the pursuit of this work has helped our garden grow, in my heart and in the actual space behind our new home. Collaboration is a beautiful thing. So, if you are contemplating revamping your garden, I encourage you in the endeavor and wish you patience, creative upwellings, discovery, delight and, of course, success with the support of a great collaborator.