Vegetable Rows and Cottage Whimseys

I was thinking today about the vegetable garden at our former home, off on the southeast edge of our third-acre lot, and also of the cottage-style flower beds, above, which we had in front of the house.

My husband, having come from a background as a farmhand, was a wonderful gardener, and we always had a great vegetable garden, with sweet corn, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes--oh, can FarmBoy grow tomatoes!--which we enjoyed in countless delicious summer feasts.

My contribution to the yard was the front cottage garden which I started one week when FarmBoy was away. I bought a little thyme and some lavender, but primarily I began with old-fashioned plants I admired in the gardens of friends, which they happily divided and shared. Then, once the garden got going, it was mostly populated by volunteers, little plants that just showed up and which I gratefully nurtured along.

At first, seeing my volunteers, FarmBoy, with his background in vegetable gardening, would declare, "That's a weed. Pull it out." I'd stand guard over the plant before him, facing down his menacing hoe, and reply, "A weed is merely a plant that is growing where someone doesn't want it to grow. I want that there, therefore, it is not a weed." In time, he understood; we compromised. Soon we each had our gardens. He had his rows of neatly manicured vegetables, and I had my artfully arranged collection of native and transplanted pretty things.

I was thinking today that those two distinct gardens stand for me as a metaphor for our current educational system. The best schools are like the vegetable garden. Each plant in my husband's garden was respected and treated for its individual qualities, and because he carefully watered and weeded his plot the result was an admirable harvest. The vegetable garden was a great place to grow sweet corn, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. It was a beautiful thing.

But, then, there were the others, those I gave a home to in my cottage garden. Some sorts of plants don't thrive in rows, or even respond well to watering. Some, although glorious in a mountain meadow or with their feet in the shallows of a pond, appear to be weeds when growing among the vegetables. Some don't produce anything consumable, but are merely beautiful. Some just don't belong in a vegetable garden.

I'm glad I had a place for those others. Where is the place for such others in the school-gardens of our modern world?