by Melissa Manning

Created on: February 18, 2009   Last Updated: March 01, 2009

My story is really my mother's story. It's true that she could not have had this story without me, but mine was just a supporting role.

My mother was a very analytical person but not a practical one. She had a wide knowledge of gardening, from formal to English cottage, from Great House to kitchen, from Colonial Williamsburg to Cape Cod. She had a library full of rose books but still bought every new one she could find. However, all the time I was growing up, my mother never had a very successful garden.

Her plans were too grandiose, the scope so large it was unattainable, the variety so huge it defeated her before she began. My mother bought daffodil bulbs by the bushel basket, seeds by the hundred-packets, trees by the dozen. The whole family learned to dread her enthusiams.

However, as she grew older and I did, too, I became interested in helping her achieve one dream. My mother wanted a wild garden and I became her helper.

I would drive my mother out into the countryside, with cardboard boxes, a trenching tool, and a trowel in the backseat. My mother would have a few plants in mind and we would go searching.

We started small, with the easily found Spring Beauty, Bloodroot, and Squirrel Corn which abound in Virginia woodlands and grow profusely along the sides of the road. They are easy to get without too much trespass and easy to dig and transplant. Soon the dogwood trees in her front yard were surrounded with pale pink Beauties and the creek bank was starred with white.

The next foray was for Virginia Bluebells, the brilliant spring flower that turns the river banks into a deeper reflection of the sky. The Bluebells loved our creek and even spread uphill to the lawn, where we used them for cut flowers. Along with the Bluebells came May Apples, whose green parasols were soon under every tree. My mother had not wanted them but grew to admire their opportunistic nature.

We were a little worried about trespassing, at least I was, but I remember crawling through barbed wire fences to dig Yellow Dogtooth Violets out of a cow pasture. My mother couldn't believe we had actually found them and I couldn't deny her longing. Anyway, there was no farmer in sight.

Not all our attempts succeeded. The Bluets did not like our rich and acidic soil, preferring the dry, gravely roadsides where we found them in drifts of tiny blue flowers. The giant white Trillium I brought her from the powerline cuts of West Virginia did not survive.

But the Dames Rocket from Point of Rocks thrived

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