British garden designer, Adam Frost, famously describes his two grandmothers as "Scruffy Nan and Tidy Nan." I sometimes wonder if we are cousins! I, too, have two grandmothers with distinctly different gardening styles – but mine were in the US, so I suspect, perhaps, this is just a commonality of many grandmothers.

Both of my grandmothers, members of the Greatest Generation, grew up on farms in the Midwest. Both lived through the Great Depression on the knife's edge of poverty and deprivation during their childhoods. They were small town girls who married hurriedly as their respective husbands shipped off at the beginning of the US involvement in WWII. And they both raised families, including my parents, and gardened in their own distinctive ways.

Despite their similarities of background, my grandmothers were strikingly different.

My maternal grandmother, Grandma Violet, valued natural beauty above all. Her home was a haven for dogs and birds, chipmunks and squirrels, rabbits and foxes and coyotes whom she watched with joy as the days and months and seasons passed. The home where she lived and gardened when I was a child was tucked into a wooded thicket where deer roamed freely. She grew raspberries by the bushel which she assiduously turned into raspberry jelly and her famous cobbler and served over cereal in the mornings. Freezing and preserving filled her late summers so that her raspberry supply lasted all year long in a basement freezer just for that purpose. My grandfather was the champion raspberry picker, heading out into the thicket each night for an hour of picking – and eating – before dinner was placed on the table. I suspect it was an activity of solace, an unwinding after a long day.

Grandma Violet's garden was cool and shady, tidied and groomed. It was the perfect place to play as a child with fairies hiding out in the woods and an occasional doe watching our games as our dolls romped through the lilies. I can still feel the soft grass cool damp underfoot, her gentle lawn the only place in my childhood where I ever ran around barefoot outside. The grass was dotted with wild violets and wild ginger – the woods filled with native ferns and herbaceous plants not because they were intentionally planted, but because the land had never been disturbed.

Grandma Violet grew African Violets – a huge range – which filled the bay window in her kitchen and then spent the winters under grow lights when natural light levels were too low. As I sat at breakfast I would tenderly pet their fuzzy leaves and marvel at the color range of their beautiful blooms – delicate and sweet. I suspect they were an attempt to fill the green void left during the long, cold, snowy winters of Illinois which could be bleak and lonely. But bird feeders placed carefully at every big plate-glass window drew her beloved wildlife – cardinals and bluejays, woodpeckers, swallows, and Tanagers – to the windows even on the snowiest, coldest days. Rabbits and squirrels, turkeys and chipmunks and mice would come and eat below the feeders while the birds feasted aloft. Even brutally cold winters were filled with wildlife if you looked carefully.

Grandma Rhubarb, my father's mother, appreciated beauty, but that was never her end goal. She lived in a home with a small backyard which had been entirely turned into a vegetable garden. She grew rhubarb and raspberries, leafy greens, tomatoes, cabbages, carrots, strawberries, and all manner of beans. She grew flowers for pollinators – drawing them into her garden to assist in her vegetable production efforts. She spent the late summer canning and preserving, too, so that she and my grandfather had homegrown vegetables all winter. Grandma Rhubarb had a huge compost pile and shopped organically – long before "compost" or "organic" were buzzwords. She and my grandfather helped start their town's recycling center in the 1970s and fretted about climate change, pollution, overconsumption, and the environment decades before such issues became common topics of conversation.

A copy of Silent Spring sat next to the Bible on Grandma Rhubarb's bookshelf – she had taken every word to heart, and she considered it her responsibility to make the world a better place for her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Grandma Rhubarb's garden was a true kitchen garden. It was beautiful because it was green and growing and lush. It wasn't an aesthetic triumph. It was, however, a culinary triumph. Very early on I learned to love the tartness of rhubarb kuchen, a delicious ancestral treat that tastes of Grandma's kitchen every time I make it. Each time we visited, she would make Kohlrouladen, a German steamed cabbage roll traditional in my grandfather's immigrant family and beloved by her children. My grandfather would do battle with the rabbits in the garden – half-heartedly, to be honest – but working to keep them from munching all of their hard-grown produce and grumbling about it in his gently curmudgeonly way – all while whistling "You are my Sunshine" under his breath.

As a gardener, when I am working in my own garden, my grandmothers are with me. Grandma Violet turned 100 this fall. She no longer gardens, but from time-to-time I send her photographs of my own, and we talk gardening together. She lives in a little apartment with a patio with her beloved kitty – always connected to nature and wildlife, even now.

Grandma Rhubarb died a few years ago, having lived into her late 90's. She gardened to the end assisted by my uncle, himself a venerable gardener. My compost piles are a living memorial to her and to my grandfather – the people who taught me about composting and conservation, imbuing me with responsibility from a very early age. I know they approve!

Like Grandma Violet, I garden for beauty. I grow dahlias and roses and other cut flowers to fill my own home with blooms. I also plant sunflowers and cosmos and coneflowers to draw in and feed the birds and insects, hoping one day to see a fox or a turkey in our garden. Like Grandma Rhubarb, I grow rhubarb and tomatoes and leafy greens. While my vegetable patch isn't as large as hers, I share her passion for the environment – transforming our property inch by inch into something that is hospitable to local fauna – filled with native flora.

I strive for the best of each of my grandmothers. Beautiful spaces filled with healthy produce and a home for native wildlife, too. I aim to marry their aesthetics – not perfect, but living, breathing, and thriving. A Wild Revival at its best.

Happy Gardening, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Angela

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