Leaving a garden and starting over: Uprooted by Page Dickey

December 02, 2020

I left my last garden 12 years ago with little regret, despite my love for that sunny cottage garden. Instead I looked forward to starting a new, larger garden in completely different conditions: from sun to shade, from deep clay soil to thinner soil over limestone, from flat to steeply sloped, and from a deer-free space to deer-overrun, not to mention armadillos, rabbits, and raccoons. I felt excited about the new place and the new challenges.

Making that new garden has been supremely satisfying, although lately, 12 years older, with our kids having flown the nest to homes of their own or to college, I’ve been entertaining thoughts of a smaller garden that takes less time and effort to maintain. We’ve even explored the possibility of downsizing once or twice, but we like our home and location, and anyway the housing market in Austin is sizzling, making it easy to sell but hard to buy. So we’ve decided to stay put. Instead I’ve been working to make my garden easier to take care of. I’ve taken out water features that require extra maintenance, planted more shrubs and evergreens and fewer perennials, and hired seasonal help for big jobs like mulching and cutting back.

All this is to say that gardens don’t just take care of themselves, and as one gets older, less physical work starts to sound better and better. So I was intrigued when I saw author/designer Page Dickey‘s latest book, Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again, which tells how she and her husband, Bosco, left Duck Hill, their celebrated but high-maintenance garden in Salem, New York, and started over at a wilder property in Connecticut, which they dubbed Church House.

I read the book during the runup to the election, as the pandemic was regaining steam — in other words, when reading the news felt stressful. Falling into the quietly melodious prose of Dickey’s book, in which she describes her new garden’s features, soothed me, even if her New England plant palette and weather patterns differ vastly from my own here in Texas. After reading that she moved partly because taking care of the garden and keeping it tour-ready had become too much work, I was amused to learn that they chose a larger, 17-acre property that they promptly started filling with a cutting garden, flower borders, cold frames for bulbs, a greenhouse, and more. If this is slowing down, I can’t imagine what maintaining Duck Hill must have been like!

While Dickey is obviously a very hands-on gardener, I felt a disconnect between her lifestyle and my own. Seventeen acres with an orchard, potager, meadow, and woods, along with weekly gardening help — this is a gardening world beyond my experience and that of my circle of gardening friends. Reading Uprooted sometimes felt like reading the memoir of a society lady keen on garden design from a hundred years ago, with little connection to the suburban, quarter-acre (give or take), DIY gardening that I’ve always known.

Also, I soon realized that the book was not what I expected from the blurbs or jacket description. I’d anticipated an introspective look at all that goes into a decision to leave a garden of 30+ years in order to downsize — how to let go — and what starting over means to the gardener who had become so closely identified with that old garden. The majority of Uprooted, however, is a virtual tour of the new property, from the new front borders through the meadow, woodland, bluff, and fen. Charmingly described as these wild spaces are, they weren’t what I’d picked up the book to learn.

Happily, the last section, “Taking Hold,” did finally deliver on the thoughtful assessment and lessons learned that I was looking for. I enjoyed Dickey’s introspective realizations that:

  • She now gardens differently at Church House than she did at Duck Hill. At first she planted many of the plants that she’d loved at the old place. But these highly cultivated species didn’t mesh with the wilder spaces around her new garden, so she’s been pulling out these once-beloved plants.
  • She’s finding she still has much to learn about plants and ecology even after 60 years of gardening, which energizes her and gives her new purpose.
  • She and Bosco approach gardening very differently, and they’ve designed their new shared garden to accommodate both of their styles. She tends to “stand and stare” at the garden, figuring out how to make pictures with plants and create a mood, and preferring to plant in drifts and puddles for best effect. Bosco, on the other hand, likes “doing” — potting and repotting and acquiring plants with no thought of design, and desirous of more variety rather than planting en masse. While Duck Hill was entirely Dickey’s long before she married Bosco, at Church House they’ve learned to coexist and appreciate what the other brings.

So what’s my take on the book? If you’re looking for a peaceful ramble via Dickey’s observant gaze and deep love of nature — especially for the great natural beauty of New England — you’ll likely enjoy this book. While there are pretty photographs by the talented Ngoc Minh Ngo and Marion Brenner, the photos largely set a mood rather than illustrate Dickey’s prose, so don’t expect detailed images of the new garden or its wild surroundings. And if, like me, you are curious to know what starting over with a new garden really feels like and how it impacts the way you garden, well, skip to the end.

Disclosure: Timber Press sent me a copy of Uprooted for review. I reviewed it at my own discretion and without any compensation. This post, as with everything at Digging, is my own personal opinion.

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Digging Deeper

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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

24 responses to “Leaving a garden and starting over: Uprooted by Page Dickey”

  1. I love how you tie your own experience of starting over into Dickey’s. Having read “Uprooted,” I will say that I’ve learned a lot more from your blog than from Page Dickey’s book! It simply didn’t live up to its premise.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Blogs are so practical (generally), with immediate photos and descriptions. And when property size, climate, and style of planting jive more, as I think yours and mine do, a blog is just more helpful than a memoir-type book. I’m glad to have your blog out there as a gardening reference too, Gerhard!

  2. ks says:

    Nice write-up Pam. You really distilled the weaknesses of the book while pointing to aspects that readers might enjoy. And I did appreciate her epiphany concerning the natural world that surrounds Church House and her embrace of stewardship of that property .

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I did too, KS. I didn’t touch on that aspect as I should have in my review, but it was part of her discovery that there’s so much more to learn, even having gardened for decades. It’s a good lesson not to fear change.

  3. hb says:

    That’s a fair and accurate review. Well done!

  4. Kris P says:

    I enjoyed both your review and HB’s, Pam. Like you, I moved from a small garden (postage-sized in my case) to a much larger one, although the latter is still a fraction of the size of Dickey’s. After putting in an enormous amount of work transforming it over the 10 years we’ve been here, I’ve begun to realize that I now need to pursue changes to make its maintenance more manageable in the future. I was hoping to get some insights on doing that from Dickey’s book and, while there were lessons there, I didn’t feel they were readily transferable to my own situation.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I found it interesting that Dickey tried to scale back Duck Hill, but ultimately found its needs too overwhelming. Moving was simply easier. It’s such a shame that Duck Hill was converted to lawn by the next owner(s), but that’s the way of a garden. It’s nothing without the gardener. As for Dickey herself, she’s looking forward, not backward, which is admirable.

  5. Alicia says:

    Looking at the comments from your post 12 years ago was a real walk back through blogging time.

    It sounds like the book kind of missed the mark even with the last section finally addressed issues most gardeners would be thinking about. The photos should illustrate what the author is writing about.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Weren’t those 12-year-old comments a trip?? Blogging gives you such a good record of your gardening life. 🙂

  6. Ginny says:

    An insightful review, Pam, thanks. Nice to know where to focus (the end). I’m still waiting for a book to tell me how to “easy-fy” my existing 15 year old gardens. At 75 I just can’t do what I did in years past! Any books that you know of?

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Although I haven’t read it, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older by Sydney Eddison may be what you’re looking for.

  7. Denise Maher says:

    Fair and honest review, Pam, leaving readers enough space to make up their own minds. I especially liked her nature writing on birds, etc.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Thanks, Denise. While it didn’t meet all my expectations, I still enjoyed it. I’m sure others will too, especially if they know what to expect.

  8. Lisa at Greenbow says:

    I enjoyed this book. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at “downsizing” to a 17 acre property. It wasn’t what I expected either but I appreciated her ramble. I can’t identify with people that have such large gardens and the money to keep them up. It is sort of like reading a fairy tale gardening with little bits I can relate too.

  9. Laura says:

    Liked your thoughtful review. I love gardening memoirs, but I don’t think this one is for me. Seventeen acres is hard for me to relate to. I down-sized from two-thirds acre 5 years ago and that garden consumed me/my time. My “new” garden is far more manageable and every bit as fun at 1/3rd acre. I used to mow the 2/3rds acre with a push mower, which took almost all of a weekend. The new garden only requires a 20 minute weed-whack.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      Wow, a whole weekend of mowing — I bet you WERE ready to downsize. I’m thinking a 1/4-acre or even less would be about right at this point. On the other hand, I do love the privacy and quiet of our approximately 1/3-acre lot, and the garden brings me a lot of joy.

  10. Beverly says:

    I resonated with your comments of growing older and looking for ways to decrease maintenance chores. Before I retired 8 yrs ago, I was full of visions of the garden I would have once I retired and had time to work on it. Then I retired. I was awaiting the cooler temperatures of the fall season to begin work on my vision, and when it was warm and muggy and unpleasant being outside that October, I thought the spring season would be a better time. As I was unloading 1/2 yard of mulch from the back of my truck that March, I could not believe it was already in the high 80s with balmy humidity. My enthusiasm palled with the lack of “good” gardening weather. If you aren’t enjoying yourself, then why do it? Part of the reason I wanted a larger lot (over an acre) was I thought it would keep me busy and fit in retirement, but I realized I was no longer relishing the idea of new projects, because the more that was created meant the more that had to be maintained, especially when the weather was less than ideal for working outside so much of the year. I struggled with that depressing notion for a long while. But I eventually learned how to work with the weather, and I do what I can when I can. If I create something, it’s with a mind of minimal maintenance. It’s not the magazine-spread perfection I aspired to, but parts of it have become quite nice over time, despite my “neglect.” Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject. It’s a topic that a lot of us have apparently wrestled with and have come up with varied solutions or partial solutions to ease our gardening chores so we can be free to enjoy the garden (and our lives) more.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      It’s interesting to hear your experience with designing a garden for your retirement years, and the roadblocks and workarounds you found. I think the key thing is, not only do gardens change, but so do the gardeners, and what’s right for one time of your life won’t necessarily be right later on. It’s always a process. And yeah, if maintaining a garden has become all work and no play, then it’s time to change things up, either with a redesign or scaling back or hiring help or moving. There’s no one right answer.

      And I’m sure you already know, but I’ve learned through my magazine work that there is no magazine-spread perfection — and no tour perfection either — at least not on a year-round basis. There’s so much fluffing and primping that goes on before photo shoots and tour days, which is natural as the owners want the garden to look its absolute best. But that definitely does NOT mean the garden looks that way all the time. So we mere mortals need not feel bad when ours don’t look perfect all the time either (ever).

  11. Maggie C says:

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this book, Pam, as well as your thoughts on whether or not to stay in your current house.
    You’ve done such an amazing job with your garden, and I expect it will get even more beautiful as you work to reduce the maintenance. I, too, went back and forth on staying in my last house, and took the other path: after 11 years, we decided to move to a larger, sunnier, and more level lot (and a sunnier house). It’s been fun starting a new garden, but I wonder if I’ll ever do it again. It’s work! But as you noted in your review of Page Dickey’s book, there’s always more to learn, and that itself is invigorating.

    • Pam/Digging says:

      It IS fun starting a new garden, and I can see the draw. I’ve been satisfying that urge to make a new space by redoing some areas of my existing garden. That’s proven to be pretty fun too!

  12. Lori Daul says:

    Oh, I’ve been wanting to read this one for the same reasons you did, so it’s kind of a bummer that it turned out so differently from our expectations. I still want to give it a read, but I’m glad for the warning to adjust my expectations!

    • Pam/Digging says:

      I always aim to give an honest assessment, but all books that I share here I find to be worthwhile reads. I’ll be interested to hear your take on this one, Lori.