Different gardeners, different personalities

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By CHARLES REYNOLDS, The Ledger

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, widely used by educators and major corporations, my personality type is among the rarest, though you may have already guessed that. I bring up this topic because gardeners' personalities strongly influence the plants they're drawn to and the way they maintain them. Since my knowledge of psychology is nil, I'll confine my thoughts to observations made during four decades of gardening.

A shopper at the annual Master Gardeners Plant Sale  at Bee Ridge Park  she looks at a Mule Ear. (Herald-Tribune archive / 2008)

A shopper at the annual Master Gardeners Plant Sale at Bee Ridge Park she looks at a Mule Ear.
(Herald-Tribune archive / 2008)

Have you ever dined at a buffet-style restaurant and noticed slender people piling their plates high with food they can't possibly consume? My guess is that those are the folks who purchase every colorful or winsome plant they see with little or no thought given to where the plants will be installed or what their future needs will be. But hey -- it's these impressionable, short-sighted folks who keep the wedding chapels in Las Vegas in business.

And then there are the neat freaks: People who wash and vacuum their cars weekly and never appear in public with a single hair out of place. When such fastidious folks are confronted with certain plants, violent conflicts are the inevitable result. Weeping plants are sheared straight across the bottom, shrubs are sheared straight across the top and palms are "pruned up nice" -- as in butchered. Admittedly, these gardeners probably don't purchase the kinds of plants that set their teeth on edge. Perhaps the plants already existed on properties they bought, or were installed by landscapers who misread their persnickety clients' preferences.

There's another group of people I'll characterize as having a chip on their shoulder. They don't really like plants; in fact they resent them and their demands. These folks bow to convention by landscaping their property but maintain an antagonism towards plants.

One way such people manifest this animosity is by withholding water. I kid you not. I've seen them pay landscape installation companies large fees and then, not wanting to spend another dime, willfully and drastically neglect the new plantings.

Before I became enlightened and realized that people probably can't help their approach to gardening, I frequently muttered to myself. I still do it, of course -- just less often.

Charles Reynolds, a Winter Haven resident, is a member of the Garden Writers Association of America.

LOCAL GARDENING EVENTS THURSDAY, AUG. 15 IFAS Extension Sarasota County is holding a Native Shrubs for the Landscape workshop from 2 to 3 p.m. at Shamrock Park in Venice. Call 861-5000 or register online at http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu. Free. Additional events are listed at that website.
SATURDAY, AUG. 17 IFAS Extension Sarasota County is holding a Rain Barrel workshop from 10 to 11 a.m. at Longwood Park in Sarasota. Call 861-5000 or register online at http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu. Free. Rain barrels will be sold.
Last modified: August 8, 2013
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