The beauty of having a husband when you’re a gardener

(Even one who has never pulled a weed and never will)

There are many beautiful things about marriage. Companionship. Shared dreams. Emotional support. That ‘love’ thing. And, if you’re a gardener, the holy grail: a spouse with opposable thumbs who can lift heavy things.

The Husband - bless his practical, patient, deeply weed-averse soul - made a vow nearly 25 years ago. A firm, unwavering, solemn promise: “I will never pull a weed.”

And let me tell you, the man has lived that vow with a level of integrity that politicians can only dream of.

If consistency is a virtue, then he’s practically a saint.

He’ll step over weeds. He’ll ignore weeds. He’ll look directly at a weed the size of a small pony and say nothing.

But pull one? Never. Not once. Not even experimentally.

And yet… the place would fall apart without him.

The unofficial Chief of Garden Infrastructure

The Husband may not know a hydrangea from a hosta, but hand the man a post hole digger and suddenly he’s Michelangelo with power tools.

In 25 years of gardening together (me gardening, him tolerating), he has:

Built raised beds with a level of precision that suggests he thinks he’s building a boat.
Constructed fences, sheep yards and path edging.
Created a fancy tunnel to escort chickens from their palace to their run like feathered royalty.
Assembled raised beds for the berry cage, because berries deserve a fortress.
Created wine barrels with flip-top lids for my comfrey tea operation, which smells like Satan’s foot but looks extremely ‘vintage garden chic’.
Strung wire for my ornamental grapevines, mainly because he wants to sit in the shade on the deck, and without support wires, there’s no shade.
Concreted in posts and erected antique gates from my grandmother’s garden.
And every so often, emerges from his workshop with some homemade contraption he’s “tinkered up” to solve a problem I didn’t know I had but absolutely needed solved.

It’s like being married to a slightly reluctant but highly skilled garden elf.

Photos: He built me the raised garden beds, erected the birdhouse and the antique garden gates, he made the mirror, and a shelter for the lambs (among many other things). He’s really quite useful. I think I’ll keep him.

The tasks I’m forever grateful not to do

The Husband also takes on the one job in the garden I cannot, will not, and shall never do: dispatching elderly or terminally unwell chickens.

While I love my birds, he approaches this task with a pragmatism that I admire but do not possess. I say goodbye and thank them for their service. He says goodbye with a practical kindness that means I can avoid the trauma.

If there were medals for emotional outsourcing, we’d need a shelf.

The dream that still eludes me

Of course, every gardener has a dream. Some dream of owning land. Some dream of a greenhouse. Some dream of a weed-free garden.

I dream of a husband who enjoys weeding. Or hedge trimming. I’d settle for hedge trimming.

But alas, we’ve been married long enough that I know the truth: I could win Lotto, build myself a Versailles-sized estate, and he still wouldn’t pick up a pair of hedge clippers voluntarily.

And you know what? I don’t mind.

Why? Because…

He doesn’t love gardening. He doesn’t want to garden. He doesn’t even pretend to garden.

But he does turn up with tools, brackets, posts, and inventions. He does the heavy lifting…literally. He builds the stuff that makes my ideas possible, even if he sometimes grumbles while doing it.

And really, that’s a win.

I get a garden that mostly works, he gets to claim he helped create it, and the weeds… well, they get a free reign.

It’s a perfectly balanced ecosystem.

Did you know?

That lovely cut grass fragrance is because it’s stressed. It’s actually a chemical distress signal released when blades are damaged.

Sorry to make you feel bad about mowing the lawn!

Feedback

Sometimes when posting on social media, or sending emails to a subscriber list, it can feel a bit daunting, wondering if people actually enjoy the content I spend hours creating. So it’s really lovely to receive the kind of feedback I’ve had recently. Thank you to those who’ve taken the time to provide feedback. It really helps keep me motivated to keep producing this content, but it also helps me promote it.

I’m trying to build a small (and hopefully maybe large) community of gardeners who prefer this longer-form content rather than scrolling through social media. On social media platforms like Instagram, I have to try and get viewers’ attention in the short three second ‘attention grabbing’ timeframe available, otherwise they just keep scrolling. It can be a bit de-motivating spending hours making content only to have it flop because an algorithm thinks it’s not worthy. With this longer form content, I know you’ve signed up because you’re interested, and I can deliver it straight to your inbox. There’s no algorithm stifling my reach, and I know you’re seeing what I produce. It really helps keep me motivated knowing people see what I’m writing.

So, thank you for your commitment. I really do appreciate every one of you. And if you have the time, and know others who might also enjoy my content, you can help me by recommending my website or social media channels to others. I’m particularly keen to develop my website and Substack subscriber lists so I can provide my longer-form content to a wider audience.

And feel free to email me your feedback. It’s nice to get the good stuff obviously, but if there’s more you’d like to see on my website or social media, feel free to let me know.

“Love your posts and writing style”

“Ha ha, brilliant. Really well written too”

“I really liked your newsletter this week. I felt bad for your husband though when you said you should have married a masseuse! 😄”

“I just read your latest newsletter. It’s brilliant! I love your writing. I laugh out loud every time. We must have a similar sense of humour.”

What to do in the garden this week.

Northern Hemisphere

❄️Check for winter damage. Wind rock and snapped branches may need dealing with to tidy up before spring rolls around.
😩 Clean tools. Yes, it’s boring. Yes, it’s a good idea. Rusty secateurs are a crime scene.
🌹 If you haven’t already, channel your inner Edward Scissorhands and get that annoying rose pruning job completed before spring. You’ll be pleased when it’s done.
🍅 If you’re a keen bean, you can start tomato seeds indoors.
❄️ Check your garden beds and replant any bulbs that might have been lifted out of the ground by frost heaving. That’s correct. You’re not going mad (like I once thought I was)…there is actually something lifting your bulbs out of the soil. The process of freezing and thawing of the ground over winter pushes bulbs, and sometimes perennial crowns, upwards. I spent years wondering why I would find bulbs lying on top of the soil, until I learned about frost heaving.

Southern Hemisphere

🌱For autumn harvests you can now sow lettuce, spinach, silverbeet, carrots, beetroot and radish.
🥦You can start your brassicas now too - broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.
🍋 Feed citrus - they’re actively growing now and would appreciate the help.
🪻Give your lavender a light prune. Emphasis on the word ‘light’ - I overdid it last year and killed half my lavender hedge. Yes, I make plenty of mistakes too even when I should know better.
🌸 Keep on dead-heading so you continue to get blooms well into autumn.
🌼If you’re looking around your late summer garden and finding that there’s not much colour left to carry you through to autumn, now’s the time to plan for this time next year by working out what you need to put on the shopping list. Two of my go-to plants for colour in autumn are Amaranthus Crimson Fingers and Zinnias. Both give your garden a colour injection as everything else is starting to dwindle. Seedlings planted in mid summer will be hitting their stride in late summer, carrying you right through autumn. Other flowers that continue to bloom through autumn are dahlias and roses.

What’s new on Behind the Garden Gate?

🍅 Garden to Table: When tidy doesn’t mean better….catch up on my tomato growing experiment and see how things are going with my ‘laterals on’ vs ‘laterals off’ experiment. I’ve had a surprising development that I wasn’t expecting, and it’s changed the way I’m going to grow tomatoes from now on.
😩You know those days when…..total chaos! It was one of those days when NOTHING seemed to go right. And it all started when I looked out into the garden and spotted a yellow flower….
📷Snapshot shed: as usual, more photos to inspire, or simply just to ‘ooo’ and ‘ahhh’ over.

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Below: a few photos from the garden this week.