I am sorry your original post was flagged or withdrawn. The question you posted was “so where is the picture of your perfect orchard!”
I don’t believe people should be censored, or hide insecurities. After all, insecurity is why people get offended about something like …growing fruit. Moreover, challenging perspectives is always a good thing. If it wasn’t for those challenges to ones thinking, we would never grow and evolve.
To answer your question, “So Naomi…show us a picture of YOUR perfect orchard”. Well, it is winter here in Seattle and we are expected to get snow this weekend. I plant lavender under my trees. To further answer your question about my "oh so 'perfect’ orchard. As we all know in gardening, all gardens, trees, and landscaping evolve. When one reaches ‘perfection’, that state usually lasts only a certain amount of time. It’s a process.
One of the things I noticed having lived in America and Europe, is that gardening is very cultural. American culture and European culture(s) are very different in this regard.
What I find interesting is how people CHOOSE to take personal offense. Whether one is offended by my post or not is entirely defined by whether or not they feel insecure for some reason. If a person does not feel judged, but instead says to themselves “well, this is one option and it is okay to have different ideas,” then one wouldn’t feel so judged. I feel like I just morphed into the Milo Yiannopoulos of Fruit Growing I certainly hope you can find your safe space.
Nobody’s post was flagged, Naomi. But, your original post is, I think, somewhat perplexing. I don’t think you should be surprised at the general reception of your message thread, based on it’s subject line: “Why are American Backyard Orchards so Ugly?” Goodness, with one question, you’ve managed to put off the majority of our forum members, since many of us are American, and we all have an orchard of some size, mostly in our backyards. And, I don’t see any photos of your multi-grafted espalier trees in your post or on your blog, anywhere. So, we have a saying here in the USA, “put up or shut up”. Crude, but it does get the point across, no? My husband also says I have a talent for touching a nerve, so forgive me for being so blunt, but if you had bothered to look through our forum at some of our members’ photos of their very beautiful orchards, I think you might rethink your postulate. How about posting up photos of your orchard with its under plantings? Not going to belabor the obvious - about why under plantings both in commercial and home orchards is often inadvisable. My home orchard is planted within my one acre property, amongst my landscaping, but I do not plant directly under any of my trees. Around and near, but not under. I plant lovely ornamentals for both beauty and to attract pollinators. And, my garden looks very much like my grandmother’s did in Italy. I don’t think things are so different here in the USA versus other countries. I think it is more due to the individual gardener’s choice, amount of land, budget, time and ability. To paint with a broad brush is taking a very parochial view, and can cause one to make sweeping and inaccurate assumptions. I think we are all curious to see what your interpretation of a “beautiful orchard” is. So, let’s see your multi-graft espaliered fruit trees with their under plantings.
I Wasn’t offended by your question. I have flower gardens that are nice to look at. My veggie and fruit garden was always a place to go and work, but never to look Martha Stewart perfect. From day one I built a fence to hide it from others eyes. Every now and again I think about making it more eye pleasing, but life gets in the way.
I wasn’t either. And my garden is quite ugly about now. My front garden looks like the sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers! I’m one who believes it best to leave everything in the garden. I don’t clean up old plants, i use them as mulch. I might cut them up, but all yard waste stays in the garden.
I think this was the wrong place to ask your question. 100% members on this forum have orchards, most with multigrafted trees and they take a pride at what they are doing. They love their orchards with flowers or without, they take care of them. Look, in response to your question they are posting the pictures of their orchards and vegetable gardens. You did not show your pictures. Your vegetable garden does not look very good. It looks like the garden of the beginner, who had very good intensions but did not realize how much work it needed to maintain and grow things. I am afraid that your orchard is also the orchard of the beginner with a couple of lavender bushes under the trees. You want it to be beautiful but it will be a lot of work until it become the reality. I still may be wrong. You sure have pictures from the last summer. I was not offended by your question either, I just do not like people who is trying to teach people about something that they do not do themselves.
I have a little pet peeve about giving advice with little experience, and you know we have some others that do just that. I have seen videos giving advice about raspberries, and figs that was just plan wrong, advocating terrible advice. When I give advice I try to preface it with the fact I have little experience in the area of question, if that is the case.
We have people with PhD’s in horticulture here, I tend to listen to them a bit more.
I respect master gardeners for going the extra yard, but that is far from making you an expert .A good start! Spend 8 years in formal study, then you will have my attention.
Also those walking the walk running a commercial operation. It’s like getting a master’s degree. Some of the best advice comes from commercial owners.
If nothing else comes from this thread, it is always fun to see photos of peoples gardens- whatever the motivation- and I happen to think every one of them is beautiful.
In my humble opinion, this thread has brought up some wonderful conversation about the intersection between aesthetics, horticultural best practices, culture, personal taste and climate. It’s unfortunate that the OP started the conversation in such a way that so many people are offended or defensive. Truly it has brought out some good conversation.
I would say to Naomi, whether an apology is in order or not, one would go a long way in helping to promote a more positive and fruitful conversation going forward. I generally want to assume the best, and will continue to make a point to assume the best, but your interaction with this thread feels a bit trollish so far. At best, your OP feels like these political innuendo memes that are so common on FB and that have so poisoned public discourse in our country.
When we think that we have to cast shade on readers to draw them to a website about gardening, we are saying more about our self image or our perception of what we have to offer than those we are inviting to read our stuff. An important rule for persuasive communication is “ethos” meaning that in the context of communication we present ourselves as having goodwill toward our audience.
I do love this conversation though and it would be very nice for someone to start a thread with a different sort of question that leads to the same place such as: “How do you balance aesthetics and more pragmatic horticultural considerations in your orchard?” A currently successful politician achieves success by casting shade on everyone but the ones he seeks to persuade.
Anyway, despite the weaknesses of the thread, it has provoked (quite literally) some great conversation. God bless.
I am not new to the internet and so know a troll thread when I see one… and I have stayed out thus far.
That said, how exactly did you expect people to respond? You showed up at a fruit growing forum where 90% of the participants are American and started off a thread “asking” “why are American backyard orchards so ugly?”
How would you expect people to respond in almost any case where someone starts a thread off with any formulation of:
“Why are [insert group] [insert interest] so [something derogatory]?”
Why do mothers from Washington have such poorly groomed children?
…and why are they so passive aggressive? Can’t they understand that if they take offense at the offensive things I say it is because of their own insecurities?
Okay, folks. So, going to step in here as a list mod, and suggest since we’ve probably identified the actual intent of the OP’s comments, being more of a provocateur, than asking an honest question. How about let’s take this thread in a positive direction. I agree, I think perhaps the original intent was not on the surface, asking the obviously stated question. But I agree, it has garnered some very interesting posts. Naomi clearly is not interested in posting photos of her garden (perhaps she does not actually have one, yet, but would like to have a “mutli-grafted espaliered orchard”. ) We have some list members here that truly have some stunning gardens. In fact, just about every poster in this thread have some very beautiful orchards. How about we continue to post up photos of our orchards in their glory (as Drew pointed out, most of our gardens are still asleep, as we are all still at the tail end of winter.) Every poster in this thread has a garden or orchard I admire (puggylover knows I could move into her chicken coop without hesitation, and mrsg47 knows I adore her lovely gardens), so let’s continue to stay positive, and encourage Naomi to be a real, contributing forum member. No need to provocate. Just post an honest question. I will never get tired of seeing photos of our forum members’ fruit trees, beautiful, clever and creative landscaping ideas. Photos with their kiddos or grandkids enjoying the orchard or yards full of fruit. It’s a wonderful thing we have going, here. To share all of that great knowledge and talent.
So, we’re going to turn this thread from lemons to lemonade (See? It’s always all about the fruit, lol!!) SO, here are a few photos of my yard, to share my pretty, Italian-inspired gardens, because that’s my heritage and what I grew up with. Plus, it handily suits my climate:
Wow! Beautiful pics, Patty. For better or worse I do a lot of you tube videos of my gardening. In this one I’m sitting in my swing arbor reflection on why I garden and then I do a bit of a walk through. Hopefully the first part of it does not make very one sea sick. I was swinging more than I realized at the time. LOL! Video: https://youtu.be/opNUHBwduxQ
However, it should be pointed out that the philosophical question behind why we garden will usually have an impact on the outcome because colors our decision making process as we garden. This is not to say that there are good or bad reasons to garden. Still it’s fun to look at pretty pictures of people’s gardens. It’s a lot more fun to interact with them and find out why they made the gardening decisions that they made, or discuss how their gardening desires interact with climate, limitations of time, space and money and all the other influences that impact what we grow, how and how it all looks in the end.
The best thing about this thread is that it got people talking about why they garden and grow fruit. While it’s great to read about the “how” and the types of fruit people grow. The “why” makes the what and the how way more interesting. God bless.
Marcus
Ah, was waiting for someone with a keen eye! Yes, that is our wonderful, beautiful, and for some baby birds, deadly California King snake. They are expert tree climbers and baby birds are rather top on their list for a meal. Here in this photo, it is going after our lovely Hooded Oriole babies, sadly. This is our “resident” large King snake. It goes back and forth between my yard and my next door neighbor’s yard. We also have a smaller King snake we share as well. This snake was also up in my Bay Laurel screening hedge going after some Mockingbird babies. And, I’ve also seen this big guy eat a baby rattlesnake in my front yard (another one of their meal items), so our King snakes do us a good service, even if they eat baby birds
Moreover, challenging perspectives is always a good thing. If it wasn’t for those challenges to ones thinking, we would never grow and evolve.
