A Healing Garden: Creating Beauty and Connection

Discover how a Connecticut gardener transformed grief into a source of beauty, connection, and healing with pollinator-friendly plantings and a special memorial garden for her father.

Submitted by: Laura, CT, Zone 6b

---

I’ve been gardening on my central Connecticut (USDA Hardiness Zone 6b) property for the past nine years. In October 2023, my father died after a long illness. While caring for him on hospice, I turned to my garden for solace and respite and decided to create a new, pollinator-friendly mixed border spanning the front of my property as a way to cope with my grief. The site’s challenges include graded terrain that slopes toward the adjacent public sidewalk, as well as lack of convenient access to an irrigation source.

For this new border, I selected plants that would tolerate full sun, be drought tolerant once established, and were also salt tolerant, given the proximity to the public sidewalk, with its frequent pet traffic and the need to clear snow and ice in the winter. I used the sheet mulching method, my preferred technique for starting new flower beds, to smother the underlying grass without the use of herbicides. I also chose not to amend the native soil beyond covering the cardboard and newspaper with bark mulch.

To maintain continuity with other garden beds, I divided and propagated plants growing elsewhere on my property, including catmint (Nepeta), stonecrop (Hylotelephium), salvia, phlox, bugleweed (Ajuga), coneflower (Echinacea), and bee balm (Monarda).

I also grew annuals and perennials from seed, including floss flower (Ageratum), foxglove (Digitalis), Verbena bonariensis, zinnia, and Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum), with hopes that some of the former plants would self-sow.

To add spring color, I planted bulbs including ornamental alliums and daffodils. For late summer color (and the pollinators), I added bluebeard (Caryopteris) and dwarf butterfly bush (Buddleia) shrubs purchased on clearance.

Several evergreens, found at an end-of-season sale at my local garden center, including Chamaecyperis pisifera ‘Boulevard’ (false cypress), Picea pungens ‘Baby Blue’ (Norway spruce), and Juniperus chinensis ‘Blue Point’ (juniper) anchor the long border and also add winter interest.

While most of the border could easily be cut back in the fall for a "tidier" appearance, I (and the birds) have enjoyed the beauty of the standing seed heads during the winter, especially when dusted with snow.

Thanks to a mild winter last year followed by a very wet spring, many of the plants have been relatively quick to establish in their first year, and I have derived great joy from watching the border continue to take shape.

This garden bed has been visited by many pollinators and has also become a topic of conversation with neighbors, some of whom have shared plants from their gardens and were inspired to start new garden beds of their own.

For me, the benefits of gardening, especially while grieving, cannot be overstated. My garden has continued to provide a great deal of peace and hope during a difficult time and has also allowed me to connect with others who have coped with a similar loss.

In spring of 2024, I created yet another garden bed, this one in memory of my father. I chose the site for the many cardinals that frequent its nearby hedges, believed by some to represent visits from a loved one who has passed away. I look forward to developing this garden as well, knowing that my father remains with me with each passing season.