The dream house (11) -- The garden begins

Her sun azaleas were trimmed like hedges, her apricot tree endured her disregard for two-year growth, and her climbing roses by God climbed where she wanted them to. She beat a raphiolepsis (pink hawthorn) into a topiary 40 years ago that is still there today, blooming its brains out.

When the painters wanted her to cut down a mature wisteria so they could paint her high back porch railings, she somehow managed to untangle it and lay it out on the lawn 10 feet below, like a leafy wedding dress waiting to be put on. After the paint dried, she had my brother and me hoist it back up CAREFULLY, while she re-attached it to the railings. The woman was indomitable. Yard worker or gardener, she gave me an early sense of confidence with plants and dirt, and a strong belief in the benefit of regular and plentiful watering. She never fertilized or poisoned, but the plants grew, and the bugs knew better than to eat them.

When I had my own house, I found her techniques didn't quite work for me. I had to learn how to fertilize, for instance, and do something about the bugs, although I tried hard not to use anything stronger than malathion. While snails didn't grow in mom's yard, I have always been plagued with them; I have the scars to prove it. If one can go to hell for killing snails, I will burn forever. But at some point, unlike my mom, I became a gardener, not a yard worker, although I surely have worked in the yard, if you take my meaning. I am not a very good gardener, but definitely a gardener. I have brought gardens in the two houses I lived in, in California, from inception to maturity, learning everything the hard way but never losing that early confidence instilled by my mother.

All that being said, I had my work cut out for me in Turkey. Not only were we faced with man-eating wild berry bushes in the front “gardens,” but our soil was the hardest clay I had ever seen. The good news was it was fill, so I didn't have the hard-pan problem I had at my first house many years ago. The clay was very rich but totally unworkable for what I had in mind; amendment was definitely called for, and as soon as possible before our first winter, so that our future worms could get going and reproduce. Even while we were still camping out and getting the rudiments of a livable home in place, we were burying our kitchen waste in strategic spots to get the ball rolling. I knew we needed a lot of sand, and something to provide organic material to supplement the clay, but I wasn't sure what was available. During a family visit to Darıca we noticed a botanik (nursery) and dropped in to see what was for sale there. As luck would have it, the manager of the botanik happened to be the newest gardener of our neighbor Merve Hanım, and so he knew just where we lived and was in our neighborhood often. He told us what we needed was river silt to provide the organic matter and sand. Kerim Bey became our landscaping advisor on the spot, not only because he could coordinate the procurement and delivery of our silt and sand, but because, if he worked for Merve Hanım, he worked for the best. He also quickly became our friend.

As is often the case with a good usta, one thing led to another and Kerim Bey was also glad to supply us with fruit trees and cypress. I was nearly manic in my determination to get some trees in at the same time as the soil amendment so the roots of the new trees could get acclimated and strong over the upcoming winter months, meanwhile breaking up the underlying clay and building the soil. My husband and I had spent countless hours measuring the space and designing our Turkish garden way back in California, and we knew if we missed this winter, our garden would be pushed back another year. Kerim Bey seemed to understand -- being understanding is one of his strong points -- and worked out a price that considered our working with his crew. We showed him our amateurish drawings on school-kid graph paper, and we set up a schedule.

The Great Amendment

To get ready for the Great Amendment, my husband enlisted some of his family to help us clear, once again, the berry vines, which just continued to grow no matter how many times they were cut down. I kept insisting the things' roots had to come out, even though they were up to a meter in length and encased in rock-hard clay, but nobody seemed to agree with me. I can't really blame any of our family for being less than enthusiastic about the serious soaking and muddy digging involved, so I ended up doing it while they did other hard things. The ghost of my mother was with me as I slogged on my knees through wet mud, digging the pernicious things out one by one, using threats, cajolery and humor to convince them that they had to die to make my proposed flowers and trees live. It was dirty, hard work, and the roots were as tough as piano wire, but they ultimately succumbed to my persistence, and the yard was cleared as the relatives turned the clay about two feet down. We were as ready as we'd ever be.

On the big day, the big scoop things came that lifted the sand and the river silt up over the wall, only breaking it in one place, and the crew helped my husband and I spread it in layers over the clay. We then turned the amendment into the softened clay, preparing for the trees to be planted. Kerim brought us two apples, one sour cherry, a nectarine, a weeping mulberry, an apricot and nine baby cypress trees, all of which his crew and my husband planted in one day. It was as good a start to our garden as we could have hoped, and we got it all in during our first fall. While there was a long way to go, we could rest for a while, and let the trees and Mother Nature take over for the winter.