I TOLD Them So …

… but did they listen? No! And now the trees are dead and the containers are just boxes of dirt again.

There are two cement planters in the covered entranceway to my office building. It’s a tricky place to grow anything, because the entrance faces west and is covered by a deep, solid porch. You’d have to be in the forest to get any deeper shade. This area gets, maybe, one hour of sunlight a day, and that only in midsummer.  It also gets no rain. All watering has to be done by hand.

So the past two years have been funny to me, as I watch the building managers try to find something that will grow in those containers. They did pansies for a while, and the pansies did all right until someone forgot to water them. But I guess pansies were too common or something, because they didn’t just buy some new pansies. This past spring, they planted moss roses. I like moss roses. But they will not grow in deep shade, and they do need some water. They are a sun-loving succulent, after all. The moss roses lived for about four weeks, and then keeled over dead.

Next, they planted a five-foot arborvitae. I couldn’t stand it. I went to the building manager and said, “Those trees are not going to survive there. Arborvitae like sun and water. And these containers are only 18 inches square. Arborvitae need lots of room for their roots.” But he assured me that this particular variety of arborvitae liked partial shade, and that he was watering it. Yeah. About four weeks go by, and the poor little things are clearly suffering. Their leaves (or whatever you call those weird green bits) are turning grey and brown and are crackly dry. That’s when I notice that no one ever took the burlap off of the root ball, or even cut the string around it. But it’s not going to do me any good to tell them that the trees are dying. They think they know better than I. Another month goes by.

So I came to work yesterday and the trees are gone. Two empty cement pots greeted me as I climbed the front steps. I passed the manager in the hall: “I see the trees died. You know, what you need to plant there is hostas and ivy, or cast iron plant. They like deep shade. You can’t kill cast-iron plant if you try. It doesn’t care if you water it, it likes to be pot bound, and it prefers shade.”

We’ll see if they listen or if they plant some other poor, unsuspecting, and utterly inappropriate flora in the containers. It’ll be doomed. You can’t make sun-lovers happy in the shade.

Tags: horticulture, Work Life