Southern Indiana Living - Sept / Oct 2022

A Walk in the Garden with Bob Hill
The bright orange crocosmia –
roughly 3,700 miles from its
original home – was hidden
behind a pile of wood chips
in the back field, barely peeking over
the edge as if looking for some salvation,
a helping hand.
Mission accomplished. I feared
I had lost them all, refugees from a
trip to Ireland about 10 years ago,
smuggled home in a plastic bag. Such
thievery is, of course, wrong, illegal
and possibly horticulturally unhealthy.
On the other hand, the crocosmia
were taken from the edges of a
crumbing stone house above the Atlantic
Ocean near Waterford – the
very house in which my Irish family
lived hundreds of years ago before
immigrating to the United States in
the 1880s.
The. Home. Place.
So, I plead guilty to plant thievery,
your honor, but I was very careful
to wash the roots, and minimize any
possible disease damage. What better
living memory to have in our Indiana
garden than some flowers from my
great-grandma’s Irish garden? And
we left a few billion crocosmia behind
in the homeland, scattered like orange
weeds across the country from
County Cork to County Donegal.
And truth be told those crocosmia
– once labeled montbretia – were
originally native to South Africa,
about 6,000 miles south of Dublin.
They proved to be a perfect match for
the Irish climate, and I was only helping
the going eradication program.
The larger picture being every
garden needs some keepsake plants,
mementoes brought home from foreign
lands, or reminders of friends
both here and gone.
We have many. Our larger
keepsakes include a crab-apple tree
given to us almost 40 years ago by
Janet Hill’s Uncle Elmer, a raggedy
little seedling that has since become
a raggedy old thing, but mostly still
safe from the chain saw. On the other
hand, it’s in way too much shade now
and nostalgia has its limits.
Closer to the house are day lilies
and rain lilies given to us by Elmer’s
wife, the Legendary Aunt Helen, a
quiet, fearsome gardener of whom
it was said could grow tomatoes in
asphalt. We have a now 40-foot and
8 • Sept/Oct 2022 • Southern Indiana Living
Irish Refugees
glorious oak tree given to us as a 10-
foot, balled-and-burlapped gift by a
member of the famed Monarchs band
after I did a story about the group. I
start humming their fabled hit, “Look
Homeward Angel,” when I look at it.
We have another huge oak leaf
tree that, when as a transplanted
seedling, was run over by my father
while backing up his car. The tree reminds
us of that moment every year
by hurling hundreds of acorns down
every fall in retribution.
We have a Kentucky coffee tree
as a gift from a nursery friend, ferns
in the shade and iris in the sunshine,
succulents in the plant room and native
azaleas in the woods, all the latter
gifts with names attached, including
another garden legend, Fred Wiche.
The plant that kicks up the most
seasonal memories for us is the agapanthus,
which we first saw in New
Zealand and happily blooms in the
summers in Southern Indiana. Agapanthus,
like our crocosmia, is also
native to South Africa, so consider
that mileage to Indiana.
New Zealand really stirs up
memories because the trip was just
a spur-of-the-moment idea. We’d
heard and read about it. Great plants
and gardens and it’s warm way down
there when cold up here. Our companions
were two old friends from
Minnesota who really wanted to get
out of the cold.
So, there we were in Christchurch
walking the town’s botanic
garden, headed south along the Pacific
Ocean, west to a boat ride from
Milford Sound, looking south to the
Tasmanian Sea and Antarctica.
The food was wonderful, the
people fun and easy going, the whole
country like a big sports bar with
wineries and sheep farms and majestic
mountains. It all fell in place in
Auckland where we watched locals
and tourists alike bungee jump off its
iconic Sky Tower. As we returned to
our car and left the parking garage,
the crossbar lifted high to allow us
out – a Viagra commercial written
across its side.
OK, that’s a lot to load on an agapanthus
plant blooming in our yard,
especially since we are roughly 8,300
miles north by northeast from New
Zealand as very lost crow flies.
But it does bring all those memories
back: the crocosmia from my ancestorial
home; the agapanthus from
the wonderful folks of Kiwi-land.
Walking our gardens is a little like
old home week without the costs and
baggage handling issues.
And let the record show, your
honor, I did not dig up any agapanthus
in New Zealand and haul them
home in my suitcase, although several
billion of them exist there, too. We
bought some later as memory makers
and planted them in old metal baskets
from Eastern Europe, this connecting
three far-flung countries in
one Hoosier backyard.
We move that basket indoors in
the winter, but if you are interested
there are hardy agapanthus – those
brave souls that will survive our
winters if mulched or just dug up, allowed
to dry and stored indoors. It’s
a beautiful, underused plant easily
available online.
Beyond that, it’s just interesting
to think about the country-to-country
journeys plants take to get to our gardens.
Crocosmia and agapanthus are
considered lovable pests in Ireland
and New Zealand. We just consider
them lovable. •
About the Author
Former Courier-Journal
columnist Bob Hill enjoys
gardening, good fun, good
friends and the life he and
his wife, Janet.