By Jane Larkworthy
Illustration by Molly De St Andre / Moho Design Creative
My friend Carrie has the most impressive gardens. She’s cultivated a lineup of shrubs, trees, and bushes along the perimeter of her house that results in a glorious explosion of dahlias, hydrangeas, peonies, and tons of other beautiful flowers whose names I do not know. Separately, there’s her vegetable garden—hydroponic, no less!—that sprouts loads of cucumbers, tomatoes, and greens. She is super generous with her bounty; about once or twice a month, we’ll come home to a basket overflowing with goods from her garden waiting for us at our front door. It’s like our personal CSA.
What baffles me, as I meander through her yard, is the upkeep. She has a stressful job and yet she dedicates her off hours to even more work—of the trimming, pruning, whacking, and clipping variety. It is her bliss.
“My job requires me to talk all day long, but I also need to be alone and quiet,” said Carrie. “My garden is where I am just with my thoughts and with the birds, bees, and plants of all kinds.”
Here at home, our entire garden consists of two beds, constructed of corrugated metal, a few steps from our kitchen door. Each morning I step out and grab a handful of mint leaves to add to my smoothie. One bed, in fact, has been overtaken by the mint, allowing for a few chives to quietly grow at one end so long as they know their place, the extended mint family seems to be implying. The second bed holds other herbs—thyme, basil, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, sage. Weeds thrive there, too, and when I spot them, a vindictive acrimony appears across my face. Curses, damn weeds…
Growing up in suburbia, one of the chores my father tasked me with was weed pulling. Man, I hated pulling weeds. They had to be pulled up from the root (otherwise, they’d just grow back), and once I was done, I had to meticulously sweep up every speck of dirt around the brick walk from which they sprouted. The notion of hiring someone to do this was not in our family’s budget, so it fell to me, and thus my lifelong disdain for weeding, and, possibly, the lack of interest in gardening in general. But according to my green-thumbed friends, I may be missing the larger picture.
“It’s such a private pleasure,” said Maria, one of these friends, of the weed pulling and everything else. “A working out of my own anxiety, my quest for peace and beauty. In the evening, when the sun is setting and the light is just so, there is really no other place I’d rather be. And to think, somehow, hole by hole, I did this.”
I did this…yes, fine, I do feel a sense of pride when I clip a few sprigs of oregano to sprinkle over the pasta, or that mint for my smoothie. I can’t imagine not growing these foods in our yard. And even if the weeds do manage to muscle their way in and taunt me as I clip, I brush it off. Carrie and Maria may find their meditative moments in their gardens. Me, the self care I practice is letting go of perfection. Who cares if our garden is a mess? It’s our mess. (Sorry, Dad.)
For those with higher gardening aspirations than mine, here’s some helpful advice from my talented friends.
1 Visit great gardens.
Visit the Berkshire Botanical Garden and any public garden you can find; go on Open Days tours of private gardens (gardenconservancy.org), suggests Maria. “You will find inspiration and can learn the mistakes of the host gardeners who are always more than happy to share ideas,” she said.
2 The best garden is the one you put in yourself.
“‘Best,’ because it is a journal of your aesthetics, your life, your passion. Your mistakes, your victories,” said Maria. “It is the difference between a ‘garden’ and ‘landscaping.’ If you are a gardener, you do it yourself, mistakes and all.”
3 Start small.
Being able to cultivate herbs and use them for cooking, as I do, brings immense pleasure to the palate and a sense of satisfaction. When you’re ready for more, “start looking at perennials,” said my friend Anna, keeping in mind that it takes 3–5 years for a garden to mature and it needs room to grow. “Fill in with annuals for all-summer blooming,” she said. “This area is rife with critters who love to munch on most plants so if you do not have a fenced garden, stick to those that have strong scents, such as peonies, lilacs, and irises.”
Jane Larkworthy was a renowned beauty editor in New York City for decades—and, more recently, a renowned resident of the Berkshires, a friend, wife, stepmother, giver, and writer. She passed away from breast cancer on June 4, 2025. The B was fortunate to have Jane’s witty and engaging voice in her column, “On a Lark,” in most of our issues—she wrote about her love of hiking, gardening, Birkenstocks, and her dog, Remy, among other topics. She is missed.
