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Planting the Walls

© Carol Wallace

I must confess that my first urge to start a garden had little to do with an urge to connect to the earth. Rather it was inspired by a stone wall. The wall is part of the foundation of an old barn that once stood on the property, until it caved in and we had to have it razed. What I was left with is something I had never thought to have in any yard of my own. Real ruins!

Now ruins are something that truly appealed to my romantic soul. I had gardens in other areas -- not places I was passionate about --just places where I planted flowers and bulbs because they looked nice - and because when you own a home, you're almost expected to do a bit of gardening there. But this excited me.

Every book I read says to make your major garden one that is close to the house so that you'll see it constantly and remember to go out and tend it. Our ruins are about as far from the house as you can get. But I was thrilled with them and determined that we needed to create a real garden there. Which we did -- it is now the main garden, and with the careful installation of a second bed opposite the ruined wall, backed with a hedge of hemlocks trimmed to shrub shape, it has become something else I never thought I'd have -- a walled garden complete with gate.

I really got hooked on gardening in the process, buying more plants than the area could hold. And that is when I realized that I hadn't even begun to exploit the possibilities for planting in my little walled garden. Because I soon discovered that I could plant things in that wall!

It happened partly by accident. A columbine seed must have blown around and landed in a pocket of soil there. We had a rainy spring which kept the seed moist - and then it germinated. I was, of course, too busy looking at the ground to notice until I glanced up one day and saw something blooming way higher than ground level.

That did it! I was convinced I was going to turn that wall into a solid mass of flowers.

It's not that easy.

If you were going to construct a wall intentionally, and knew you wanted to be able to plant in it, you would leave space for huge soil pockets to hold substantial root systems. If you do that, your possibilities are, if not exactly endless, at least substantially increased.

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