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Maria Mascaro
Landing, New Jersey
This is the story of my garden.
I am an artist and a teacher and the mother of one (now
teenage) boy. I was 49 when I finally managed to purchase
my own home. I was elated. It was a lovely little lake
home with a spacious open floor plan in a quiet community
- perfect! Well, ALMOST perfect. The "backyard"
was a steep, rocky, barren hill that approached a 45
degree angle. It had several large trees and a tangle
of underbrush beneath them. No one had ever even THOUGHT
of putting a garden there. And neither did I at first.
I was so busy with so many other "new homeowner"
projects that attempting such a prodigious task never
occurred to me. I would just look out my kitchen window
at the rocky "jungle" and sigh: "I love
this home; too bad I'll never have a garden".
I come from a family of Italian gardeners. Some of my
most vivid memories are walks with my grandmother in
her backyard learning the names of the flowers that
grew there as she spoke of them in her accented English
("Theesa eesa foura clock. They calla dem fouraclock
becausa they opena when the sun starta go don."),
listening to her stories about them ("Theesa one,
thees eesa the mother rose. Alla the reda rose eena
the yard comea froma theesa one bush."). My father
literally died in his garden; he suffered a heart attack
cutting down sumac saplings in the 103 degree heat wave
of August, 2001. I knew that robust 81year old man would
not have wanted to die in some sick bed but would rather
have passed on this way, working...in his garden. My
father had fig trees; my grandmother had over a hundred
rose bushes. I always dreamt I would too.
A year past in my new home and many tasks were accomplished.
One spring day, I looked out that kitchen window and
saw those rocks and thought..."Hmmmm...I have so
many rocks, why can't I build a rock garden!?"
A little research on the special considerations of true
rock or alpine gardening answered THAT question but
now my mind was thinking a little more "outside
the box". I didn't have a traditional area for
a garden or money for a landscaper but...maybe...
A neighbor had a chain saw and helped me cut down the
underbrush and several small trees to open the area
(photo of area after cutting attached...alas no "jungle
pictures" are extant). My neighbor had a bad knee
and so I carried all the logs, branches, brush, etc.
to the front of my home for the chippers...alone...almost
defiant in the loneliness of the heavy task. The pile
I created was approximately seven and half feet tall.
No mean feat for a 5'1" 50 year old I thought!
The town chipper crew came to take the wood, took one
look, and said: "We're going for a beer first!"
It took them THREE AND A HALF HOURS to chip all the
brush. I felt proud of myself.
Then I began to dig. Rocks. Dig...CHINK! Dig...CHINK!
Dig...CHINK! There was little ELSE but rocks. I broke
picks. I broke shovels. But I dug them out. Only to
find...more rocks....and more rocks. There was very
little dirt at all on the hill and what was there was
red and dry. Sigh. Fancying myself with some genetic
trait passed on from Roman builders, I stacked all the
rocks into borders and edges for my beds and I carried
soil up that steep hill to fill the holes they'd left
behind in the groundl. A true labor of love. I didn't
know anything about constructing a raised bed so half
the soil I carried up that hill the first year washed
back down that winter. But time passed...and I kept
digging and some soil started staying and some plants
started growing (muscles too!). And now, four years
later...please, take a look at my garden!
More
information: Click here
to see more of Maria's garden
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