Why Get Dirty?

My personal approach to gardening

My close friends and former colleagues would undoubtedly agree that I am reluctant to accept received wisdom, lack common sense, and always try to work things out from first principles myself. Offset against that, they would also recognise that I listen intently, read voraciously, learn everything I can about anything I take an interest in, and think deeply about the underlying justification for my opinions. Rather than taking umbrage when challenged, I test new information and conflicting opinions against my own analysis, incorporating whatever I feel useful and discarding the rest. I can never rest easy on information presented as fact, and need to understand in depth before I am happy to accept this as such.

My approach to gardening is no different. Scratch the surface even slightly and you quickly realise that the garden is an astoundingly, bewilderingly, fascinatingly complex place. A lifetime of study would be necessary to truly master even a small part of its incredible intricacy. But as with all things worth learning, there are many levels of understanding. For one person, it may be sufficient to know that most plants need sunlight. Another might want to understand the difference between photosynthesis and photorespiration and under what conditions plants make use of each of these. Yet another might only be satisfied with a detailed understanding of how chemical elements in the soil are assembled into complex molecules, and how these work together to convert solar energy into organic sugars.

As we acquire greater understanding, we gain a greater ability to generalise; to examine a situation we encounter in the garden and to work out ourselves from first principles what we need to do. If we simply learn a fact, we may know that a particular plant should be pruned in a particular way at a particular time of year. With a little more understanding, we realise that we prune at that time of year because that plant flowers on stems that grew in the previous year (so cutting these off before flowering would be a bad idea); as a result, we learn to look at our plants to see when and how they flower, and from that deduce when to prune. With still more understanding, we learn that phytohormones accumulate at a pruning wound, stimulating more rapid growth from nearby meristem cells, and hence that pruning can be used to promote increased bushiness and hence an improved floral display; as a result, we learn to look at each plant and take conscious decisions as to where we make each and every pruning cut.

There is no ‘right’ level of understanding. Building greater understanding takes time and effort, and for many of us, that time could be better spent on other priorities. For me personally, a useful heuristic is whether or not I can explain an idea to an interested and intelligent general listener encountering that idea for the first time, and whether or not I can answer their immediate questions to their satisfaction. Thus, I do not feel the need to explain plant chemistry to a chemist (not a general listener) nor to address the questions that might arise once that listener has had time to build their own understanding to my own level. When I first learn something, I am myself the listener, and I need to be able to answer my own questions to my own satisfaction.

I apply exactly this approach to gardening (and to photography, and cooking, and to many other areas in which I have taken an interest over time). I read established ‘facts’ about gardening and ask what seem to be to be the obvious questions. Plants obtain nutrients from the soil. So, what kind of nutrients do plants need, and how do they extract them from the soil. The initial answer is through relationships with fungi and bacteria in the soil. So how do these relationships work and how can I as a gardener support these relationships? What are the specific species of bacteria and fungi? Too detailed for me as I can’t generalise this information into something I can make use of as a home gardener (and “what species of mycorrhizal fungi colonise the roots of a particular plant?” is not a question that would immediately spring to mind for a general listener…).

As I build this understanding, I can use it to take decisions on how I manage my garden. Rather than blindly following the planting instructions on a new acquisition (e.g. “dig a hole twice the size of the root ball and back fill with compost”), I can decide for myself how to get it into the ground. This might be to simply dig a hole the same size as the container the plant came in; or it might be to wash all the growing media off the roots and prune them before planting the plant as a newly bare rooted specimen. Either way, I can take my own decision and am responsible for the outcome. The same applies whether I am planting, applying mulch, pruning established plants, propagating new plants, or addressing problems in the garden.

Why I began Getting Dirty

Once I began to dig a little deeper into gardening, I rapidly realised that much of the information presented as ‘fact’ is too often a combination of long-established norms whose origins are lost in the mists of time; currently fashionable practices based on the preferences of authority figures seeking to promote their commercial interests; and well-researched agricultural methods that may not be applicable to the home garden. Many of the resources available to the home gardener contradict one another, and vanishingly few seek to provide understanding as to why they make the recommendations that they do.

This is not to say that there are not excellent resources out there. If anything, there is a surfeit of such expertise, and the practices recommended are very likely to work in most situations encountered by the home gardener. Here in the UK, like most home gardeners, I particularly rely on the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and the BBC’s Gardener’s World programme. However, I am frequently frustrated that their most easily accessible resources provide only facts and instructions; not the reasoning behind these.

At the other extreme, universities and research institutes provide huge volumes of highly specific, in depth, and at times, extremely technical, horticultural science materials that are well beyond the capacity of most home gardeners to take on board. Furthermore, the closer we get to cutting edge science, the more we require an appreciation of the processes by which science takes place to understand what is established knowledge and what remains part of the cut and thrust of scientific debate.

There are also books such as “Botany for Gardeners” and “Genealogy for Gardeners” (both RHS publications); “How Plants Work” by Linda Chalker-Scott (a co-host of the excellent “The Garden Professors” blog, and a debunker of gardening myths); and “Digging Deeper” by Paul Williams. These, together with the Extension Master Gardener resources freely available in many US states and Canada (albeit not necessarily adaptable to my home climate in the UK), and innumerable expert videos on YouTube (with a specific callout to those presented as part of the Soil Food Web School’s Soil Regeneration Summits) have taught me a great deal.

I have spent many hours digesting these, and far many more than I can name (though here may be a good start), comparing and cross-referencing them in order to develop the understanding I personally need. Getting Dirty is the story of what I have learned along the way, and what I continue to learn, helping me to consolidate my own knowledge and understanding.

The future of Getting Dirty

Getting Dirty sprang from my notes on gardening and garden science, at a time when I was actively considering my options for a second career, and was spending a significant amount of time in my own garden. I am now well on the way to a fulfilling second career as a garden designer; a role that requires an understanding not only of plants and soil, but also of construction materials, ideas from art such as colour theory and composition, concepts from design itself, and many others.

Recognising that many people want their outdoor spaces to be both functional and beautiful, but do not want to employ the services of a professional designer, I see the future of Getting Dirty as a resource that can be drawn on by anyone to help them achieve their garden goals.

With this in mind, the scope of Getting Dirty has now grown. As well as articles on plant and soil science, it will include posts on many other aspects of gardens and garden design, all the time keeping its focus as a quest for deeper understanding. The potential range of topics is huge, so it will take me a very long time to even scratch the surface. I plan to publish an article at least once a week (sometimes more, depending on my schedule), and hope you will accompany me on this journey.

If you have a particular topic you’d like me to dig deeper into, please drop me a line at duncan@asphodel.co

Let’s Get Dirty!