I come from a long line of people who seem to have had no trouble whatsoever making things grow. As a matter of fact, it’s what we do. And by we, I don’t exactly mean me. Those who came before me for as long as we can trace have made good, honest livings growing things in the dirt.
As far as my dad can remember, the men on both sides of his family farmed the flatlands of eastern North Carolina. Tobacco, corn, soybeans and peanuts. I remember visiting my grandparents’ farm in Hertford, North Carolina, as a little girl and surveying my Pop’s golden peanut trophy, earned for producing Perquimans County’s highest poundage of peanuts per acre that year, as if it were an Olympic gold medal.
A section of their family farm was dedicated to my Mamaw’s large garden, where she would cultivate her own corn, many varieties of peas and beans that would eventually be put in the deep freezer to be enjoyed year-round, cucumbers that would become her famous sweet canned pickles that she would generously share with friends and family, watermelon, squash, beets, okra and tomatoes. If you ate a vegetable from Pop and Mamaw’s table, there was a darn good chance it came from her garden or the garden of someone who lived in their rural community.
And while my maternal grandparents were not professional farmers, they were avid gardeners in their own right. My grandfather maintained an immaculate lawn and grew the most delicious tomatoes I’ve ever tasted, year after year, in his backyard garden. He worked in his yard tirelessly, pruning this and fertilizing that, the fruits of his labor culminating in the spring and summer months when his gorgeous azaleas, giant hydrangea bushes and fragrant gardenias bloomed. My grandmother adorned their porches with beautiful sun ferns, geraniums and mums, and planted ivy that eventually crept whimsically up their bricks. She potted African violets as centerpieces for her living room coffee table.
My parents continued this family legacy on a smaller scale with pretty little flower beds they would plant together, the occasional vegetable garden, and even a brief foray into backyard composting.
And so, when I consider the preceding generations of naturally gifted growers in my family, it is completely and utterly lost on me as to how I was born with a thumb browner than the dead-as-a-doornail plants that usually disgrace my porches and patio. I try, really I do. At the beginning of each season, I make happy little treks to every one of our local garden centers and fill the back of my large SUV to the brim with vibrant plants, XXL bags of potting soil, fertilizer, and everything else I could possibly need to set myself up for plant-growing success.
I go into each planting season with great enthusiasm and hopefulness, seemingly forgetting that year after year, I will end up surveying my outdoor spaces with great dismay. Inevitably, my front porch mums are deader than Count Dracula in his coffin by Halloween, my once-lush ferns are crispy-fried by the Fourth of July, the potted orchid my husband gifts me each Valentine’s Day is wilted just in time for April Fools’ Day, and my spring pansy beds have been gobbled up entirely by a pesky neighborhood bunny that, in spite of my most creative efforts to deter him, seems to prefer my blooms to those of every other yard in the neighborhood whose pansies are left perpetually unbothered. There are only two plants that continue to thrive against all odds at my house: a pair of evergreen pond cypress trees in large urns that flank our front door. Trees that are made of plastic. My husband likes to joke that I could probably kill those too if I tried hard enough.
I’m not sure if I’m overwatering or underwatering my plants, giving them too much or too little sunlight, potting them in the wrong containers, not whispering sweet nothings to them often enough, or simply just neglecting them in favor of the two species of the human variety that I am also trying my best to keep alive. I have promised those children that we will plant a garden for the first time this spring. All I have to say is that I sure hope the green thumb gene simply just skipped my generation. Please wish us luck with our very first garden. You may want to say a little prayer for the plants, too.
Claire Mullen can be reached at clairejlmullen@gmail.com, especially if you have gardening tips to share.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Home & Garden” May 2025 e-edition here.