Over the weekend I prepped my yard for the summer season. I spread two cubic yards of mulch in my front and back flower beds. I topped off my garden boxes with fresh soil. I transferred my seedlings from inside where I started them months ago under a grow light to outside in containers full of fresh compost. I weeded every corner and trimmed my trees. I hung a flower basket on my front porch and checked the drip line for leaks.
Over the weekend I also attended my grandfather’s funeral.
The two events are not unrelated.
My grandfather Boyd Datwyler was born on April 8, 1934, in Logan, Utah. He stayed in Logan all through high school until he graduated in 1953 and enlisted in the army. He was stationed in Texas and Germany, then returned home in 1955 to study landscape architecture at Utah State University. While there, he met his wife Janice Allred. Together they had six children, one of them my mother.
After graduation, Boyd and Jan moved to Provo, where Boyd began his career as landscape architect for the planning department at Brigham Young University. His designs shaped the BYU campus and his influence extended to the campuses of BYU–Idaho and BYU–Hawaii. He also designed the vegetation placement for many municipal parks.
The man loved plants.
At his funeral a common theme among those who spoke was Grandpa Boyd’s oak tree that shaded his back patio. He planted the tree as an acorn shortly after moving into his home and it now towers above the house, and is the centerpiece of a backyard that has been immaculately cultivated by the world’s biggest plant fan for decades. The shaded back patio has always been the extended family’s gathering place in warm weather, and we’ve all felt a certain sense of peace sitting beneath the tree’s speckled shade for hours on end.
Grandpa Boyd taught everyone in the family to love plants both directly and indirectly.
At first my relationship with my yard was shame-based. Maybe that’s too dramatic. But there was definitely an anxiety that drove me to keep my lawn green and beds weed-free. Anxiety over what Grandpa Boyd would think if he visited my home and saw a parched lawn and dandelion-infested rose bushes.
When he did visit my home, I peppered him with questions about how to water, prune, and nourish the plants I had, which plants I should buy, and where I should put them. He wasn’t a man of many words, but he always had the exact right advice. Except for when I asked him about the Tree of Heaven I had inherited with the house. His only insight was that a more apt name for the monstrosity that created approximately one million seedlings in the surrounding soil would be “the tree from Hell.”
His influence and know-how trickled through the family. My mom and her siblings maintain immaculate yards and they’ve taught their children how to do the same, often much to those children’s chagrin.
When my husband and I bought our first house, my dad volunteered many a Saturday afternoon helping us lay sod, plant shrubs, and remove dead trees. On one of those Saturdays he said to me, “I need you to know that I’m doing this for you because Grandpa Boyd did this for me.”
The more I worked to keep my yard at Grandpa Boyd standards, the more I enjoyed the work. Over the years the anxiety morphed into passion. I often found myself walking outside for no other reason than to stare at my lilac bushes and tomato blossoms. All of a sudden I was enjoying the care and keeping of flora. No, actually, living for the care and keeping of flora.
And now, from the months of April to October every spare thought and every spare moment I have is spent in the garden. Recently one of my children caught me in a thousand yard stare, and when they asked me what I was thinking about, I had to reply honestly with “compost.”
I don’t know if this is the outcome of nature or nurture. Whether there’s an actual inherited trait in my DNA that makes me want to order a new packet of seeds every week, or if it’s just the decades-long influence of Grandpa Boyd. But honestly, what’s the difference?
I just know I am happiest walking outside, checking on my plants, stirring my compost tumbler. And every time I place a new seedling in the ground, I am reminded of the man, who, much like the oak tree he planted, was always a sturdy and protective presence in my life that made me feel at peace.