Ease up, but don't totally give up, on gardening as you age
Sydney Eddison thinks you can weed out loads of demanding yard work as you age without reducing the enjoyment of gardening. The 78-year-old author says it's simply a matter of gardening more wisely.
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"I knew so many friends older than myself who drove themselves away from the land they loved and then promptly died," said Eddison, who opted to remain alone on her secluded but celebrated 4-plus-acres in Connecticut after her husband's death, rather than move to smaller surroundings.
She has shaped the wooded property, with house and barn, into a country showcase over the past half-century, giving tours and writing a half-dozen books about her experiences. Yet something had to give, and that something was painstaking garden maintenance.
"I threw my body at the garden over the years and got away with it, but I have to watch it now," Eddison said.
First, she had to have a hip replaced, and then she developed a cyst on her back, leaving her bedridden for a time. "I had a horrendous winter, but it made me realize there's nowhere I'd rather be but here," she said. "I couldn't do anything last year, but now I can at least stake tall plants and weed."
She gets the job done with some help from friends, and by applying many of the shortcuts described in her most recent book, "Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older."
A few of her "gleanings":
► Reject perfection. "Nature does not clean up every dead leaf in the fall and gardeners don't have to either. Dead leaves left under shrubs serve as a mulch, which eventually breaks down and contributes nutrients to the soil."
► Thin the perennials. "In my garden, the square footage devoted to flowering perennials demands more time and energy than the rest of the acre and a hal
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