Garden Rescue by Richard Bisgrove
“Don’t cut the lawn, don’t cut the lawn!
You will cut my little nestlings who have just been born.”
~The lark, to Mr. Pomeroy and Snapping Jack, the lawn mower,
in Margaret Mahey’s wonderful story, Don’t Cut the Lawn
Ah, lawn care. I’ve never paid too much attention to it. But after reading Richard Bisgrove’s little book, Garden Rescue, I just might pay a bit more. Of course, Bisgrove is a British author and garden expert writing about British lawns and gardens, and so his remedies for improving the quality of your lawn may not work with the grasses here in North America. (Lawn care experts, please comment!) However, in his experience, much can be done just by adjusting the height of the mower.
Garden Rescue by Richard Bisgrove
Want finer grasses? Mow more often and closer to the ground. Redesigning your whole garden? Plant the whole thing in grass, then mow only the areas that you plan to turn into lawn. You’ll vividly see the outlines of the borders and can easily adjust your design from week to week simply by mowing. Once you’ve settled on something, replace the grass in the borders. Leave the lawn.
Bisgrove’s book was first published in 1979 under the title Your Problem Garden. In addition to helping those with misbehaving and neglected lawns, the author aims to address a variety of other problems that gardeners commonly face, such as overgrown borders, poorly drained hollows and, the reason I picked it up, dry, shady, root-filled hell holes under big old greedy trees.
Like the author of the last book I reviewed for The Green Season, Bisgrove is squarely in the “work with what you’ve got” camp. “One could say that there is no such thing as a problem garden,” he writes in the introduction, “only problem gardeners with misguided and unrealistic expectations.”
Dry Shade
I guess I’m one of those problem gardeners. The back of our lot is shaded by two large maple trees. I’ve been trying for years to find the right plants to grow under them. I keep hoping for a luxurious shady bower with no work and no watering. I’ve had a couple of successes, but many more failures. Unfortunately, there are no miracles for dry shade. While the author notes that perennial plants fare far better than annuals under trees, he points out that generous watering and feeding are required during a transplant’s first few years of life in the dry shade. Without it, most perennials and shrubs will never take off.
I was surprised to learn that growing some fruits and vegetables is possible in shade, if watered. Bisgrove lists leaf lettuces, cucumbers, and melons among the vegetables that can get along without full sun and alpine strawberries, raspberries and blackberries among the fruits.
Garden Tips
In spite of my disappointment over the lack of a miracle cure for tree-induced shade in Garden Rescue, the book wasn’t all a dashing of hopes. Here are a couple of Bisgrove’s more interesting ideas:
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Double Planting for Instant Results
- The author recommends double planting when establishing hedges or screens in your garden. One set of plants provides an immediate or nearly immediate effect. These quick growers are gradually replaced by the second set of plants, which are more desirable over the long term, but take longer to establish. For example, if you’d like to grow vines such as clematis for screening, plant annual vines, such as hops, sweet peas or runner beans, along with the clematises. The annuals will provide immediate coverage in the few years it takes the clematises to establish themselves. Just be careful not to let the annuals overwhelm the young perennials.
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Coping with Expanses of Pavement
- I’ve never run into this problem, but I image that there a plenty of people who have been confronted with an expanse of old patio or dilapidated driveway that they don’t have the time or energy to break up and cart away. For those gardeners, Bisgrove recommends punching a few holes in the paved area and planting vines such as honeysuckles, vincas, and Hydrangea petiolaris. The vines will quickly hide the hideous old pavement. After a few years, they’ll also probably add enough organic matter to allow other things to grow as well.
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The Use of Mirrors in a Shaded Garden
- A strategically placed mirror can reflect light into dark corners of a shady garden and give a small garden an added sense of spaciousness. Bisgrove cautions that the mirror should be sited so that it reflects attractive aspects of the garden and not the observer. “The effect should be of a window of light opening from the garden, not a piece of bedroom furniture left outside by mistake.”
