It is no secret that Barbara Blossom Ashmun is an avid gardener. Besides having a floriferous name, there are the intimate titles of her memoirs: “Married to My Garden” (2003) and “Love Letters to My Garden” (2017). This Portland garden designer and writer did not grow up as a gardener, but instead found her calling well into adulthood. A divorce and the desire to leave the world of a social worker helped this process.
This may be why she writes with the conviction of a convert. “No one ever died from having too many plants. And never allow partners, spouses, friends, or curmudgeons discourage you from experimenting with new plants. If anyone grills you about how many plants you bought, don’t take the bait. Give them a Mona Lisa smile and change the subject.”
The author has a knack for writing for both the experienced and novice gardener. She uses a light hand with Latin names, relying on her non-gardening husband’s feedback to keep these in check. But that doesn’t mean she resists the latest new cultivar from cutting edge nurseries. She understands plant lust very well, but she also found an antidote to that in the Kleingarten movement in Germany. Gardeners whose faces “shone with happiness” cultivate these small spaces with the most common of flowers and vegetables.
Ashmun concludes “Love Letters” with a poignant story (also found in the Winter 2013 issue of “Pacific Horticulture”) about the loss of a giant sweet gum that dominated her back yard. Over the short period of time it took to cut down the failing tree, her yard went from shady to sunny. It was a shock. However, this gardener, now in her seventies, had the necessary resilience to create a new patio in the space the sweet gum had occupied, with more space for – yes! – more plants.
Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.