In the garden: Traits of a ‘non-gardening’ gardener

Colleen Slater

guest columnist

A woman who regularly serves as an officer in the Lakebay Fuchsia Society claims she’s not a gardener, but she loves flowers.

Myvanwy Shirley says she’s learned a great deal since joining the society nine years ago, but she doesn’t claim gardening as a talent.

“You don’t have a garden!” one friend told her, and Shirley tends to agree, “But we have a lot of lawn and colorful flowers around.”

Just before she moved to Vaughn, her Oregon church held a plant sale, and she bought a flat of 16 perennials.

“What shall we do with them?” she asked her new husband.

They read labels and put them in sun or shade, as required. The next day, only eight plants remained, so they figured those were deer-proof.

Among the original four that thrived are a low blue veronica and a variegated vinca.

Shirley also had a fuchsia, perhaps 3 inches tall, that she kept inside on a windowsill. A year later, it hadn’t grown. It died soon afterward.

Since she planned to stay in the area long enough to have some kind of garden, she attended an advertised Fuchsia Society meeting, joined a few months later and became club secretary.

After a year, she served as president, an office she’s held “off and on” since then.

“I’ve learned so much from the people there,” she said, “and they’ve been incredibly patient with me.”

At a March meeting not long after Shirley joined, Sharon Miller demonstrated starting fuchsias by cutting off tips of a larger plant and inserting them each into prepared soil in a plastic six-pack container. She said to set them on a windowsill.

Bill Tyler, an Oregon grower, said that wasn’t the way to do it, so he gave instructions for his method: The six-pack should be put into a re-sealable gallon bag, with skewers, Popsicle sticks or some other item to hold the top up, keep it inflated, seal it and set it in a warm place. Every day, each plant should be given five drops of water.

Miller told her she needed to take the container out of the bag every day for about five minutes to prevent botrytis, a word Shirley had never heard before.

She followed the advice of both — one start died — and when new leaves appeared, she re-potted the rest in larger containers.

The following September, Shirley received three blue ribbons on her new fuchsias, the only blue ribbons she ever won in her life. She was told if she wins five blues, she’s no longer a novice, but she feels safe from losing that designation right now.

Shirley loves to talk about the Fuchsia Society garden at the Key Peninsula Civic Center, where they have more than fifty varieties of hardy fuchsias, including some very hardy encliandras that have been added more recently.

The society maintains the garden and holds an annual plant sale the Saturday before Mother’s Day. Fuchsias and other plants cover the civic center lawn by 9 a.m.

At home, Shirley continues to add deer-proof perennials to borders, with a few wired cages to protect some special plants, but she doesn’t want her yard to look “like a combat zone,” so neighborhood deer browse freely.

They trimmed a patch of ivy to look like a weed-whacker attacked it.

Shirley set pots of fuchsias and tomatoes on her porches, but the deer found them and feasted, even if it meant a two-story leap to the ground when humans approached.

She likes the deer. They’re fun to watch, graceful and curious, she said.

“Between dogs and fuchsias and deer, the deer would win, hands down,” she said.

Deer don’t eat everything, and some bright-colored flowers do make shows in her “non-garden” yard.

Reach Colleen Slater at cas4936@centurytel.net.