Today we pay tribute to David’s father, Lawrence Edwin Deardorff, who passed away on May 11 at the age of 97. Larry first took David into the garden when he was 6 years old, and he learned about the world of plants at his father’s side. Larry was an avid gardener his entire life, and became our partner when David and I owned Island Biotropix, an orchid nursery and tissue culture lab in Hawaii. Thank you, Dad. We will miss you terribly.

David wrote this memory of his Dad last year and we’d like to share it with you today:

 My father’s huge hands scooped a small hole in the rich garden soil and placed a tomato seedling in it. He mopped his brow, sweating in the humid afternoon of an Ohio spring. As instructed, I knelt beside him, scraped soil around the root ball with my small eight year old hands, and pressed it down. My first lesson in how to be a good provider. A man’s job.  Our backyard vegetable garden became an important source of food for a big family with a meager income.

 Dad hammered a wooden stake into the ground beside the plant, showing me how to place the stake to avoid damaging the roots. More interested in completing my bug collection than in embracing the moment, my mind wandered and precious moments with my father melted away like winter snow.

 I loosely tied three or four strips of an old sheet to each stake, optimistically anticipating the eventual height of the tomato plants. As spring passed into summer the tomato patch became a jungle and helping Dad tie each plant to its stake as the plant grew taller was my responsibility.

 On a hot summer afternoon when Dad was at work, I walked into the garden alone. “Keep Out” he had decreed. Ah, but he was not home and I was a bad boy.

 The evocative aroma of the tomato plants enveloped me as I brushed past their leaves. Taller than me, the exuberant vines hid me as I hunted for bugs. Large green fruit hung down in clusters on all sides. A solitary fire-engine red tomato, like a buoy in that sea of green, called out to me. Furtively, I snatched it from the vine.

The fruit radiated heat from the sun into my hands.  I took a bite. The flavor exploded in my mouth. Incredibly complex acidity, sweetness, and aroma. It was magnificent, and so vivid it is burned into my memory banks. I have never forgotten the taste of that forbidden fruit.

 When Dad came home he went directly to the garden. I’m sure he’d been dreaming about that ripe tomato, the first of the season, all day long. He must have stared in disbelief at the empty space where it had been. I can imagine the storm clouds gathering in his face and almost hear thunderous bellowing that came after. But I wasn’t there to see. Long gone, I played at a neighbor’s house, and missed the outburst.

Later that evening, at supper, Dad brooded, certain that one of us children had stolen his tomato. His dark mood infected the house. He didn’t know which of us had done it. All of us were suspect. Safe behind Mom’s protection, all my sisters maintained their innocence. As of course, did I.

 We moved out west in 1957, where summer nights are cool and dry, and not as friendly to tomatoes. I’ve grown tomatoes in the west for more than fifty years, but I’ve never duplicated the sensational taste or size of that stolen tomato of my childhood.

 Dad planted a vegetable garden every year. He even bought the vacant lot next door and turned that into food production as well. As he aged he began to complain about the hard work. Each year he swore he would never plant a garden again and yet, by summer his garden would always be in full production. Throughout the growing season he distributed baskets of onions, squash, beans and tomatoes to all of his children.

As I matured and put down roots thousands of miles away to found my own family, my father and I remained close. We conversed for hours about orchids, birch trees, and tomatoes. We debated the merits of fertilizers, hand tools, and special cultivars. I convinced him to try native wildflowers in the flower beds, he convinced me to grow his favorite open-pollinated pimiento. The garden has been a conduit for our love for almost sixty years. 

 Over all that time I never told Dad that I was the one who ate that tomato. He would laugh about it now, if it were possible for him to understand me. But it’s too late.

After ninety six years he’s gone away, leaving his body behind. The doctors call it senile dementia, not Alzheimer’s, but the result is the same. He has no memory of any of his children, of his wife of seventy-one years, or of anything to do with gardening. I am a stranger to him now. Just a nice guy who brought him the last ripe tomato of the season.

Garden Art means different things to different people.

In the vegetable garden it can take the form of a screen to mask the compost bin, or a painting on the side of the tool shed. Some of us – and by us I mean gardeners – take care to lay out our herb gardens to create patterns that please the eye. Then we add decorative elements that bring us joy or remind us where the time has flown.

Herbs join flowers, ceramic fish, and a sun-dial in this garden in Santa Fe, NM

Most of the time garden art means a sculptural element that we add to gardens as focal points, as whimsical elements, to make statements, or as mementoes. Focal points work especially well when space is limited and the city encroaches just outside the garden walls.

Alert to the urban sounds just beyond the fence, bronze deer bring a welcome reminder of the natural world to a pocket garden in Portland, OR.

Focal points also serve to draw us along the garden path, sometimes giving us pleasant surprises.

We take a turn around a newly-installed garden in Port Ludlow, WA where a civic-minded resident transformed his empty lot into an informal neighborhood park.

We appreciate the bold statements some art makes. It draws our attention to elements of the context in which a garden sits, to contributions of indigenous people, to the past from which the garden derives.

The courtyard of a museum in Santa Fe NM reminds us of the cultural context from which much of the art and gardens of New Mexico grow.

Whimsy plays a vital role in the choice of garden art. It brings magic and mystery to gardens, and enhances the joy of growing flowers, herbs, and trees.

There be dragons among the gaillardia, yarrow, rosemary, and apples in this Santa Fe, NM garden.

But I think we love it best when the garden is the art and its plants serve as sculpture, form, and function. David and I designed the informal park in Port Ludlow I mentioned above. It is such a delight to take a blank slate and transform earth and light, soil and water into a lovely place to be.

We invite you to share your stories of the greenworld, and welcome you to join us at one of our stops on the road. See our events page for all the details. If you have a favorite spot we should not miss, please let us know.

As many of you may realize by now, while David and I are avid gardeners, our passion is the gateway to nature that the garden provides. As we arrive in New Mexico, so does spring, with all its chaotic and unpredictable weather. Red buds bloom along with plums, lilacs, and cottonwood. And then it snows, and gardeners and farmers worry about their incipient apricots, cherries, and apples.

As I look out the window, reluctant to venture out into the chilly morning, I muse about the birds that flit among the branches of street trees. Barely visible as they industriously seek their morning fare, I wonder how the birds passed the cold night. Have they built nests and laid eggs yet?  My mind meanders to thoughts of Birds and Their Trees.

It seems to me that birds have a very intimate relationship with trees. Trees provide home, security, and often, food. As we travel down the west coast on our book tour, we encounter cormorants nesting in Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) at Pismo Beach on the California Coast. In all the years I have watched cormorants carrying on – in Baja California, in the Pacific Northwest, in Alta California, and even in the bosque along the Rio Grande – I have never seen a nesting colony. We are enchanted. I enjoy the irony that the birds have chosen a semi-urban setting to raise their babies.

In Arizona, as we make our way toward New Mexico, we stop for a late picnic. In the quiet, not too far from the less-traveled blue highway, birds rustle the grasses. We hold still, wondering what might appear. A flicker of brown wings. I slowly raise my binoculars, while David brings his camera to his eye. A bird bursts from the grass and alights in a cholla cactus (Opuntia sp). We are well-acquainted with this bird – a cactus wren – whose life revolves around the sustenance that the cactus provides.

When we cross the border into New Mexico, we are enveloped by an oak-pine forest. Taking a short hike off the road we stop to enjoy the peace of an oak woodland (Quercus emoryi). The leaves twitch with life, but we are not sure what we’ve seen. A flash of blueish gray. A beady eye. A flutter of wings as the bird lands to get a better look at us. This Mexican Jay proves to be a people watcher. Perhaps others have shared their picnic with him. I snap his picture before he tires of us. What is his relationship with the oak? I am sure the Jay loves its acorns. Does he nest among its leafy branches as well?

We pass through the Gila National Forest and we stop at a favorite birding spot. I hear sounds that I recognize. I slice an orange and lay pieces of it on a white-washed stone wall near the trail. We step back into the dense copse. I hold the camera to one eye and watch the forest with the other. We don’t wait long. Our reward for quiet patience arrives. Warily, the Gila Woodpecker approaches the orange slices. He is vigilant in case this is a trap. I snap his picture and he hears the shutter. He pecks the orange slice, and then disappears into the forest. What bird has a more intimate relationship with trees than a woodpecker?

Trees form the backbone of our gardens. They provide the skeletal structure, and these bones invite wildlife to visit. These wild creatures provide invaluable services. Birds, for instance, provide insect control and fertilizer. And if we, in turn, offer shelter and food, we stand to make great gains.  We help create healthy habitat; we defragment the eco-system in which we reside, no matter where that is; and we heal our relationship with the natural world.

Do you have a story of trees or birds to share? We invite you to share your stories of the greenworld, and welcome you to join us at one of our stops on the road. See our events page for all the details. If you have a favorite spot we should not miss, please let us know.