Ross Collins | The Accidental Gardener

My aunt Gwen in Moorhead recently celebrated her 100th birthday, and we honored that achievement, as we should. But we often take for granted other living things that have been with us a long time. Such as plants. Gwen’s sister in a 1993 article reflected on the age of her plants, considering this question: which plant have you had the longest in your yard?
At this time Dorothy had started her garden 36 years before. Her yard began as a nearly blank canvas, with a four-foot spruce, some Eastern red cedars by the foundation, and a scattering of red tulips. The spruce, she said, was still there, but she wasn’t sure the tree would really count. So she put together another list.
“These are plants that suffered through too wet or too dry seasons,” she observed, “through neglect and various kinds of damage, through severe winters and winters which were mild but damaging because of freeze and thaw cycles.”
Thinking about that gave Dorothy a new appreciation, “a new affection for these plants after realizing how old they are.”
Not including trees, most obvious of her long-lived plants were lilac and highbush cranberry. But not so expected were the smaller, more humble perennials that had been faithful to her yard since the beginning. First on that listwas the gas plant (Dictamnus). “Everybody should have this wonderful plant,” she suggested. “The foliage is neat, never needs trimming, and bears flowers of lavender or white, which have the fascinating habit of exploding mildly in flame when you hold a lighted match underneath the flower cluster.”
What Dorothy didn’t write regarding her gas plant, undoubtedly due to space limitation, was that her son was so obsessed with the mild flame that in his frenzied work with matches he managed to singe quite a few blooms. Don’t most boys at age 11 have a flame fascination?
But gas plants tolerate a lot. Today my garden celebrates its 29th season, and, of course, I do have gas plants. Purplish and white. I haven’t tried the flame trick now for quite a few years, but perhaps should rekindle that fascination for this old boy. Works best at dusk.
Dorothy also identified two lilies, but more surprising were her long-lived roses. People think it’s too difficult to grow roses in the north country, she often said, but that is not true. “I know it is hard to believe that any of the modern roses would live that long in this climate, but these have,” she wrote.
“They are Clarice Goodacre, a white floribunda, and Presidential, a pink grandiflora.”
For us today these are old roses indeed. Clarice Goodacre was hybridized in the United Kingdom in 1918, Presidential in the United States in 1960. “I got two of these plants in 1959,” Dorothy recalled, “the year of the presidential campaign that was won by John F. Kennedy.” The rose was good enough to earn Dorothy flower show awards, she said, but it did not come from a fancy-pants nursery. “You could get a plant for a box top from All-Bran cereal for $2. I ordered two plants.” One died, but “this one has stuck with me through thick and thin.”
And vegetables? Her pick also is the methuselah of my own garden, already old by the time I moved in. The former owner tried repeatedly to grub it out, but it survived her efforts. You probably guessed it: rhubarb. Dorothy also mentioned garlic chives, a flowering ornamental that in a pinch you can chop up for a garnish.
But I found surprising that Dorothy didn’t mention the tough perennial that never quits, a cemetery and foundation favorite: peony. People have told me they know of peonies that must be a century old, and they may not be wrong, as the lifespan of this tough plant can indeed reach 100 years. Their faithful constitution breaks our hearts, though, as invariably the rollicking luscious globes of bloom quickly succumb to the force of our early-summer windy days. But longevity is its own reward. And we celebrate that.
Editor’s note: Dorothy Collins wrote a weekly garden column for the Fargo-Moorhead community from 1957 until 2008. Her last column appeared just a few weeks before her death at age 92. Many of her columns were based on experiences and challenges of her extensive gardens in south Moorhead where she lived during the entire time she wrote. Dorothy was an accredited flower show judge who herself collected boxes of ribbons for her own entries at flower shows and fairs.
Her son Ross, who grew up in Moorhead but now lives in Fargo, is a professor of communication at North Dakota State University. But he also tries his best to keep up his flower beds and gardens in his south Fargo home in the Hawthorne neighborhood. He calls himself the accidental gardener, because while gardening was never really his hobby he did learn a lot as his mother dragged him from flower show to show and nursery to nursery as a kid. He also worked at Shotwell Floral for a short time, a job that pleased his mother because he could get a discount on plants. He has served as president of the FM Horticulture Society, a group his mother co-founded in 1977.
The gardening stories he relates here are based on his experiences growing up with one of the region’s best-known gardeners, as well as his gleanings from his mother’s thousands of columns. Dorothy’s book, Flowers Between the Frosts: How to Grow Great Gardens in Short Seasons, is available from the NDSU Press.