Deep Roots: If Plants Could Talk
Try as we might, all gardeners kill plants; here, Scott Beuerlein imagines some leafy victims of his past mistakes coming back to haunt him
What garden nightmares are made of
I had a bad dream the other night. I was in court. I had just been convicted of many horrible crimes, and now it was time for victim-impact statements.
One by one, all the snakebark maples I’ve killed went to the witness box: Acer pennsylvanicum, A. tegmentosum, grosseri, grosseri var. hersii, davidii, rufinerve, capillipes, ‘Erythrocladum’, ‘White Tigress’ and others, all of them blaming me for their untimely, cankerous deaths. As ‘White Tigress’ spoke, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“But I loved you! I cared for you,” I blurted out. “I raised most of you from seed. I gave you the very best of everything! I planted you with perfect planting technique. I mulched. I fertilized. I watered you when you were dry. I even planted you in that proverbial rich, moist soil!”
“Enough!” shouted the judge.
“Can I shackle him?” begged the bailiff.
Chaos erupted, but gradually the room tuned into the words of ‘White Tigress’, still on the stand and stunningly beautiful in her eternal youth. In a faltering, trembling voice, she said, “We never wanted those things. We never wanted fertilizer. We wanted to be dry.”
Her voice grew stronger as she said, “We needed perfect drainage.”
She stood up, pointed directly at me and shouted, “And we can’t survive rich, moist soil! You fool. You damned fool!” Then she collapsed.
As I was hauled out by two big, strong deputies, wrenching my shoulders and kicking my legs like manhandled criminals do, I called to all my dead snakebark maples: “If you can tell me that now, why didn’t you tell me that before?!”
(“Good point,” acknowledged my lawyer. “We should have used that.”)
I was thrown into a jail where the other inmates were all Amur honeysuckle and porcelainberry vines, weeds I’ve purposely killed by the thousands. I woke up screaming.
If only plants could talk...
I wish plants could tell us what they want. Wouldn’t it be great if, as you’re about to saw off a branch, your shrub would lean over and whisper, “Don’t.”
How helpful would it be if the fern you’re about to plant in hot, dry sun would mention, “Not here.”
How nice it would be if that bargain-bin plant in your cart would tell you, “There are a million mulberry weed seeds in my pot.”
Wouldn’t that be a dream?
Illustration by Tom Beuerlein
