Perennials declare themselves in spring, like a photographic image emerging in a darkroom tray.

And, in the end, the love you take… is equal to the love you make.

Lennon and McCartney were likely thinking of gift-giving in the garden when they penned this musical footnote to the Beatles’ classic Abbey Road album.

Garden gifts are living keepsakes – with the memory and meaning of the giver permanently attached to the perennial plant now growing in the receiver’s garden.

All in the family

When my parents started a family in their almost-new Don Mills bungalow in the early 1960s, they dug in several Forsythia shrubs to line the front of their home.

My mom Sheila took cuttings from the shrubs when the snow was still on the ground. Placed in a vase of water, the Forsythia cuttings bloomed indoors to hasten the arrival of spring.

During my parents’ move years later from the family home to a condo, my mom gifted me with a final Forsythia cutting. I discovered that the cuttings root easily outdoors with some TLWWW – tender-loving watering, weeding and waiting.

My mom’s cutting found a good spot in our front garden in Riverdale. Today, 8 years later, my propagated Forsythia shows off its bold yellow bloom in spring, and optimistic greenery throughout the growing season.

I have returned the favour over the years with small perennial gifts for Sheila’s garden. Some recent examples include Trillium bulbs, Lily of the Valley with their tender white bell blooms, and strawberry plants. The strawberries are spreading a second generation across my mom’s new guerilla garden, located in the public park near her condo.

The gifted perennials surround a small circular garden she has dug around an old hollow log stump. Inside the stump bloom red geraniums, which she tends daily.  Passersby in the park often stop by to comment on this small jewel of a garden in a public park near Norman Ingram elementary school.

 “Gifts” from the abandoned garden

Our cottage neighbors Harry and Christine haven’t been seen in three years. Word is they moved to the west coast. Their Minden cottage lot, in the Haliburton region, is sprouting volunteer poplar and sand-cherry trees. Several Minden phonebooks wrapped in plastic linger on the steps. But the rhubarb patch Harry and Christine planted years ago has taken nicely in the sunny south side of a small hill.

On a May weekend, the rhubarb is mighty tempting and will surely go to waste. Plus the act of harvesting will stimulate the plant, I tell myself. With a promise of dessert for dinner at the in-laws, I pay a clandestine visit to Harry and Christine’s rhubarb patch.

To pick rhubarb, you need to investigate each cluster, zero in on the older, outer stalks, and preserve the young stalks at the heart of the cluster. To harvest, the thumb slides down to the deep red base of the stalk, and pushes hard before snapping the stalk up. The large floppy leaves may be used as a mulch around tomato seedlings that are just going in with the first heat wave of the season.

This act of rhubarb piracy turns into a fair trade when I spark up the gas mower, cut the grass on Harry and Christine’s property, and plant a mixed flower basket gift in the planter near the front door — to give the place a lived-in look. And possibly ward off cottage burglars.

Thank you, Harry and Christine, for the rhubarb. It was stewed by my wife Nadine with sugar and strawberries and served as a compote atop some Kawartha Dairy vanilla ice cream.

The inherited garden

Over at Thorncliffe Community Garden, on hydro land just north of Toronto’s “arrival city” of Thorncliffe Park highrises, my new garden declares itself. I’ve decided to change plots to a more open area of the garden, with fewer fences, and closer to the wildlife at the edge of the ravine. A new garden in spring is like a photograph emerging in the chemical tray of a darkroom, before the digital age. It’s an act of wonder and patience on the part of the photographer, as the image emerges.

This spring, peonies, rhubarb, chives, and raspberry canes have sprouted in my new garden, and a grand-daddy red currant bush sets a promising crop of berries. The plants are all gifts from the plot’s previous owner, Stacey, who has recently moved.  She came by to pick up a favourite gooseberry bush, and gifted me several dozen perennial flowers and herbs that border her garden plot, leaving them be. I will honor the gift by keeping the plants, and fill in the gaps with some tomatoes, peas, potatoes, beans and carrots. How can I repay this gift? I’ve offered to divide the Peony in fall for its original owner, I’ve left some plants in my old plot which I hope the owner can use, and have made recent green donations to fellow gardeners.

In fact, Linda has dropped by on her way to feed the birds. She is the steward of the community garden’s burgeoning wildlife population, the topic for a future blog. “Do you need any gladiola bulbs?” I ask. Linda knows I’m likely flush on gladiolas in the same way she was once flush on Irises.

She takes a handful of bulbs for her garden, possibly to humour me — a footnote that will be the prequel to future garden gifting.