A Glimpse Of The Garden

By Nancy K. Crevier

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a miniseries focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

Working for Holmes Fine Gardens as a designer and landscaper for many years, Sarah Middeleer was too preoccupied with clients’ gardens to devote time to her own love of container gardening. But the fortunate outcome of an accident last year that has left her wheelchair bound, she said, is that she can now enjoy her own container gardens more.

“Being in a wheelchair has dramatically changed what gardening I am able to do,” said Ms Middeleer. “But I’ve always loved container gardening and this has been an opportunity to do more of it. I can wheel out to the deck and have my husband bring me my pots and a bag of soil, and that’s what I do,” she said. “My landscape enterprise is now more in my mind than my body, but I’m immersed in it as much as I can be. Besides my own pleasure, container gardening at home puts more ideas in my mind to use for later clients as I try out new plants in containers or come up with new, nice combinations of annuals for them,” Ms Middeleer said.

Her small back deck is filled with greenery bursting forth from containers. Annuals, perennials, herbs, and vegetables grow and bloom side-by-side at a height ideal for Ms Middeleer to tend.

Among the ornamentals she grows on her patio are a pitasporum with deep green leaves and fragrant white flowers that bloom in late winter; a waxy-leaved hoya plant that came from a cutting given to her by her mother — “It has traveled with me whenever I have moved,” said Ms Middeleer; a jasmine plant; verbena; geraniums; and a eucalyptus tree. They cluster about still more containers that are filled with edibles.

“I had never grown lettuces and herbs in pots before, and it is so much easier,” said Ms Middeleer. “I can just come right out onto my deck and gather food for dinner. Vegetable gardens in containers are something I’ll be able to pass on to clients wondering if they want a big vegetable garden. Some of our clients are elderly or live on smaller properties and don’t want a big landscape or garden to maintain. Container gardening is ideal,” she said.

With every container that she plants, Ms Middeleer said that she learns, whether it is about choosing plastic or glazed over unglazed terra cotta pots, or remembering to cut back more frequently and keep on top of the watering. Next year she hopes to add more handmade pottery for visual enjoyment and to begin adding different levels to the container gardening space.

The deck garden has brought her solace as she adjusts to a new way of gardening. “I’ve had time now to watch the hummingbirds, butterflies, and the hummingbird moths that visit here. It’s a place for me to think, reboot, and,” she said, “to get new ideas.”

That is what is down the garden path at Sarah Middeleer’s.