I’ve always thought that even the humblest of flower arrangements is a garden in and of itself. Be it a single volunteer Johnny-Jump-Up that appears at the edge of a bed of annuals or a hillside bedecked in dandelion blossoms, to me, it’s a garden, and no less spectacular than if some avid gardener had toiled for hours with hoe and/or weed-puller. Some of my own best gardens were achieved with little or no effort, and often by doing nothing more than scratching the surface of the soil, randomly sprinkling it with a few seeds, watering them and then forgetting about them until nature decided just what to do with them. In all honesty, I can say that she has never disappointed me.

I’ve reached that point in my life where I can say that I’ve lived in many places, and nowhere have I not been able to find a spot to sow a few seeds and bask in the glory of the blossoms with which they eventually present me. Walking away from a garden is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and each time it happens, I allow myself a period of mourning before once again tiring of it and deciding to set my sights, rather, on the much more pleasurable task of deciding where my next garden will be. Where the ground’s been stony and recalcitrant, I’ve resorted to raised beds and to tucking individual specimens in wherever my trowel didn’t hit solid rock. And where no ground was available to me at all, I’ve dragged out large pots and urns, filled them with soil, and reveled in what a bit of improvisation can do to an otherwise bare and uninviting front or back porch.

Years ago, I lived in an apartment in Saco where the front door opened directly out onto the sidewalk. Its only saving grace was the granite stoop that I eventually filled with pots, planting boxes and hanging baskets. There, I grew marigolds, pansies and petunias, along with cherry tomatoes, a few green beans, and, of all things, fava beans. Yes, fava beans, whose robust vines twined themselves around a small trellis inserted in the soil. I harvested only a handful of these unusual beans, but my joy rested in the simple fact that I had indeed managed to grow them ”“ and on a tiny front stoop at that.

As even the humblest grouping of blossoms can constitute a garden, so does a person who loves gardens ”“ whether or not he or she actually has one ”“ constitute a gardener. And only a gardener forced to leave would worry about the garden’s future care or lack thereof. Will the new owners see it for what it was and still can be? Will they be knowledgeable enough to recognize the different species of plants that inhabit their new garden, or lacking that, be willing to learn? Or will the garden be left to chance and to nature to do with it as she ultimately will?

Taking leave of a garden is a sad event brimming with the realization that you will never see it to maturity, and won’t be around a few years from then when that grouping of fledgling perennials would have reached its peak or the heirloom roses would have reached the top of the trellis. Leaving a garden behind also carries with it the possibility that the new owners or tenants may obliterate it altogether in favor of a paved walkway covering what was once a thick patch of creeping thyme or an in-ground swimming pool going in where honeysuckle once ran rampant. A kinship with growing things develops slowly in the gardener’s soul, much as a shoot pushes its way tentatively through the still-cold soil of spring. But once it blossoms, its loyalty is as perennial as an iris or daylily border, growing lusher and fuller with each passing season.

And then, when it’s time to leave, turning away from the memory of the years one has put into the love and nurturing of each delicate tendril is a tearing away like no other. For there is really no plant that the gardener doesn’t feel some emotion toward, be it affection or annoyance or simply acceptance that it is where it is through some unspoken and unalterable natural plan. Gardeners everywhere accept the fact that with growing things as with all else, some compromise is always necessary. In my own experience, I learned that it isn’t possible to eliminate all the weeds in a garden and that some happy medium must be arrived at. I think that, in the end, it’s best to give nature her due and tolerate a bit of ground ivy among the columbines or plantain growing not far from the chrysanthemums.

As I continue along my life’s journey, I will never cease to love gardens, be they postage-stamp size or take up 20 acres. And if I can’t actually till the blessed earth, I will carry a garden in my heart with me wherever I go, scattering what few seeds I can along the way as evidence of a great and eternal love.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Springvale, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.