by Jeff Barrus

EDITOR

Last year I wrote a column whose main thesis was that winter wasn't all that bad if you had a game plan to get you through the snowy months. I'd like to take this opportunity to recant those hubristic statements. I was wrong. Winter is better than me. It beat me fair and square this year, repeatedly, over what seemed like 10 months of arctic purgatory.

I'd like to think the defeat taught me humility. But we humans are a resilient species, hardwired to put pain behind us quickly, and our pride tends to resurface when the snow melts. Since antiquity, spring has been the season for launching expeditions of no return, waging unwinnable wars, initiating ruinous romances. Spring creates the illusion that we can put on a pair of shorts and become masters of our domain once again. It's the season that coaxes us into the worst of the seven deadly sins: gardening.

I've been fighting down a smug feeling of triumph this spring since discovering that some of the trees I planted last fall are still alive. This feels like a miracle, but I'll take credit for it anyway. I lived a long time in the equatorial tropics where growing a tree meant hacking off a branch, sticking it in the rich earth, and waiting for the rains to fall. Unfortunately, that's not how things work in Tooele County. Here a tree has to be tended like a small campfire in a windstorm. And if that tree dies, you're never quite sure who to blame. Was it God for cursing us with these impoverished alkaline soils? Was it Home Depot for selling me some green wonder trucked in from Oregon that morning? Was it me for failing to water the plant for six weeks during the height of summer?

This spring, I decided to enroll in a landscape design class through USU Tooele for the simple reason that I wanted to know who was to blame for things dying in my yard.

The course is taught by Larry Sagers, the most famous gardener in Utah. Actually, were it not for Larry, who is really a horticulturist, I would not believe gardeners could be famous. Perhaps he has a counterpart in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo or in some small monarchy where the state gardener is a personal advisor to the sovereign. Certainly in Utah he has no peer. Larry has earned his reputation by not only designing some of the most beautiful gardens in the state, but by dispensing years of down-to-earth advice to millions of remorseful plant killers like myself.

Most of our class has read Larry's articles in the Deseret News or heard his Saturday morning show on KSL radio, and frankly we're more than a little in awe of him. Most of us realize any question we think up has already been answered by Larry a thousand times, and so we often sound like the disciples of Confucius requesting some wisdom we've forgotten to be recited back to us: Master, what again are the four noble truths of paring down a root ball?

I'm taking the class with two of my brother-in-laws, who have more experience with local soils than I do. While I was dreaming of Thanksgiving Point in my backyard, one of my brother-in-laws told Larry he was just looking for a tree that would give him shade before he died of old age. That cast a grim pall over the class for a moment as we all contemplated our own mortality before moving on to a discussion of perennials, which lifted everyone's spirits.

Here are some tips I've picked up thus far: 1) Don't plant a Colorado blue spruce six inches from your front door. 2) Don't plant a maple tree in Grantsville salivating for the day when you'll tap it for syrup. 3) Don't design a landscape that looks like the grounds at Versailles unless you intend to quit your job to maintain it. 4) Don't sod five acres with Kentucky bluegrass unless you have a riding mower and can call down the rains personally. 5) Don't xeriscape with rock alone unless you want to make a political statement about hell on earth.

There are a lot of "don'ts" in there, but that's gardening in Utah.

Perhaps the biggest thing I've learned is that every tree -- like most people -- has at least one disagreeable trait. You may wish it were otherwise, you may hack at that trait or try to fertilize it into oblivion, but in the end you cannot go against nature. Gardening makes fatalists of us all. So even as the shadow of death stalks my yard, I shall not be afraid. I now have the comfort of knowing no one is to blame.

jbarrus@tooeletranscript.com