Garden Railroads

Something new is blooming in my garden. For years my long-suffering spouse, John, has been helping me dig, weed, transplant—that, despite the fact he is allergic to most flowers and has a back even worse than mine. Given his druthers, he would plant all hostas or ground cover. Still, he concedes around a foot of sod a season to turn our front yard into a cottage garden. If that isn’t loyalty, I don’t know what is.

His “gardening” of choice up until now has been water gardening that took the form of two ponds. One is the size of a large picnic table, the other a washtub. Still, he has some interesting flora going out there, one very tough goldfish (a former 10-cent feeder fish saved from the pet store) that even survived a baby osprey hunting from the vantage point of our neighbor’s eaves. It took 7 years, but a family of frogs has moved in for several seasons now. I love the sound of running water thanks to his modest waterfall.

All that is changing, big time. After I spent last summer in Bay View building an HO-gauge railroad in our cottage dining room with my grandson, I couldn’t help spot the wistful looks from John as he helped us turn a commercial tin can into a very believable tunnel.

I got the hint. For Christmas, Valentine’s and every celebrate-able date in between, I gifted him with a G-scale garden railroad. And before I could say, where’s the shovel, he had carved out a 15 by 10-foot network of tracks for engines, passenger and freight cars and a trolley happily toodling back and forth on a track of its own, along with a growing village of structures made from birdhouses.

It’s an amazing engineering feat, not quite the Brooklyn Bridge but close. Part of the magic are the plants that make the layout come alive, greenery that resembles full-size bushes and trees.

The project demands looking at plant growth tags literally from a whole new perspective. Essential are small leaves and flowers, as well as slow growth and low heights when mature. When it comes to rocky hillsides and lawns for garden-rail structures, moss and lichens are perfect. Other favorites are dwarf phlox, Creeping Jenny, Partridge Feather, miniature succulents like sedums and Hens and Chicks, and varieties of tiny ground covers.

I am not advocating we all dig up our perennials and start laying track. When it comes to gardening, though, I have learned a valuable lesson. One guy’s chore is another guy’s can’t-wait-to-get-at-it moment. Sometimes those plants we take for granted are a lot more diverse and versatile than we think.