Landscaping the Hospital

The prairies are a bitch when it comes to landscaping. The terrain itself is incongruent with most landscaping trends. Ornamental plants are relegated to genetically engineered apples and plums with some flowering shrubs that are largely low-growing and unimpressive when not cared for properly. I can complain about the cold for ages and how every year angry customers will demand to know why their brand new cedars died.

Well, ma'am, cedars aren't meant for our winters... did you protect them from sunburn and the wind over winter? No? What a shame...

Suppliers across the country scramble to create more diverse hybrids and cultivars of popular species like cedars. They still crash come spring, dried out and weakened from 6 months of abysmally low temperatures that range from -20 to -50. Most plants don't survive those temperatures, let alone the wind. God, that wind. Enough force to completely uproot frozen forests. A wind that catches your breath away and freezes your skin in seconds. A wind that rattles and shakes and shreds trees to bare nothingness.

Personally, I like the cold. But finding anything that can withstand it is a hearty challenge.

Summers have equally extreme weather. Freak thunderstorms, droughts, torrential rain, egregious heat that fries anything that can withstand the cold.

So it was no picnic when I tried to find plants that will last the winter with minimal maintenance. The hospital desperately needed its garden for its cancer patients, so I settled on some acid-loving hydrangeas to compliment the 60 foot tall blue spruce already in the garden, some flowering perennials to attract butterflies like delphinium and lupine complimented with some bugleweed for ground cover, and a couple planters for annuals.

What to pick, what to pick?

It shouldn't have been so difficult, but it was. Even the climactic limitations weren't my biggest struggle. What held me up, as I wrestled to make a decision, was the fact that it was for the hospital.

But it's for a good cause! Lots of people will be able to enjoy all your hard work.

That's all fine and dandy and the reason I did it after all. But that is the same hospital where I developed PTSD. The same hospital I visited for many years for a variety of gut-wrenching reasons. Reasons that made me hate it, hate its very appearance. My fathers stroke when I was 16. My sisters heart condition that almost killed her and left her 2 boys without a mother. My grandfather's death at the hands of a global pandemic. It's the hospital in which I spent 16 hours in excruciating labor, where every 3 minutes it felt as though my pelvis was being smashed with a hammer. It's where I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. It's where I ended up when my mental health deteriorated so quickly after giving birth I was afraid for my life. It's where my mental health was assessed and reassessed, where I told my story to countless nurses, psychiatrists, doctors, and psychologists. Where I got the tag, the footnote attached at the bottom of the page, of PTSD.

It's where I go in my worst nightmares. I see nothing but pain and heartbreak when I pass by it.

So I have to make it pretty because a lot of other people consider it hell, too.

Marigolds. I should plant marigolds.

What wasn't to like? Marigolds are somewhat drought tolerant, keep pests away, and provide a bright pop of colour. The downside is they can look ugly once the flowers die, like old cigarette butts that have been left out in the rain. They smell nice and are readily available, the cultivars having remained unchanged for years. I wasn't looking for anything fancy, but I paired them with some vertigo grasses with and purple/blue petunias and voila. Low maintenance planters.

I never planted anything as fast as I planted those marigolds. I shoved them into the soil with the grasses and petunias in a reasonable arrangement, scattering them amongst the thick purples and greens of the other plants. I stood back and surveyed my handiwork, itching to leave, when I realized that those bright spots of yellow looked like little flaming suns of happiness.

They will survive well into fall when everything else fades away. They will keep blooming when the hydrangeas drop their flowers. They'll finally die after everything else, when the vicious frost descends and snuffs out the sun.

I was impartial to marigolds up until that point. I left the hospital that day sweaty and coated in dust. I left them there like my own personal little beacons, drawing me back not in a nightmare, but out of necessity. They need me to return in order to survive. If I take care of them, they'll outlast everything else.

So I go back, grimacing, anxious to be done with maintenance, and I leave. Only to go back, still a little anxious, and then I get to leave them behind again. I water, prune, deadhead. I let them flourish on their own, dazzling in brilliant shades of neon yellow. Their little happy faces greet me and thank me for my work. I leave my fingerprints on each plant like a painter on a canvas. I own that little scrap of land in hell and I've made it nice. The hospital is tied to my pain like an anchor, but I've now claimed it and turned it into something beautiful.