Introduction

Greetings from an Isleton Garden. My name is Tom Farley and I have been an enthusiastic amateur and professional gardener since I was 16. Now that I have settled into Isleton after a recent move from Carmichael, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you regularly in this column. I also look forward to your letters on the plants and practices that work well in the Delta.

These articles focus on common plants, making do with your present garden, good maintenance, and experimenting with new techniques. Common, well maintained plants are entirely serviceable and pleasant to look at -- they will be written about at length. A plants' commonness can be overcome by varying its cultivation. Ordinary plants like India Hawthorn (Raphiolepsis species) look new and different when carefully pruned, made into an espalier, a standard, or set into a tub. Gardening fun can come from mail ordering perennials or collecting unusual plants from nurseries like Western Hills or East Bay in Oakland, but I will emphasize locally available plants. It does little good to extol the virtues of a wonderful but unavailable plant.

Make do with your garden. Get the most out of it without spending lots of money. Renovate a lawn without replacing it, plant seeds instead of container plants, or divide a neighbor's perennials to get plants of your own. To illustrate, the rented house I just moved into has an all Bermuda grass lawn and no shrub beds, it really has no garden at all. I'll tell you in the coming months how I get a pleasant, low budget garden started on a disagreeable looking property.

The importance of good maintenance seems obvious but it is usually overlooked. Things like fertilizing turf and certain shrubs much more often, keeping mower blades, shovels and pruning shears sharp, using a metal edger on a sidewalk and basic sprinkler maintenance will be covered. These are steps that anyone can take with a little additional effort.

Experimenting lies at the heart of gardening.Try different things and be open to different techniques. That's the key to gardening growth. I am impressed each day with what I don't know. Budding and grafting, for example, are two skillls I never developed but I know are important to learn. I'm also not very knowledgeable about fruit trees. Everyone, including me, is on a learning curve. I'll suggest some things in this column that I haven't tried before. Perhaps we can learn together.

I believe that gardening is a high calling and I treat it as such. Gardeners bring beauty into the world and we are all indebted to them for it. A single geranium blossom on a single plant where there was none before is a triumph. A flower plot that makes a person look and then pause is a victory. As gardeners we combat ugliness, despair,and loneliness by fighting it with our hands, our hearts and our hoes. We do this not only for the pure esthetic pleasure of working with plants, but for everyone who chances upon our garden.

You can garden even if you don't own property. Sow some California poppy seed by a roadway. Plant a clump of daffodils next to a well trod path. They'll bloom each year for decades. And you'll look forward to their flowering every spring and you will always smile when they do. Plant a vine next to a porch. You can do that. Take care of that vine and let it climb and cover the porch or the house. Fertilize and prune it and look after it. And let a thousand flowers bloom!