ARE YOU A MESSY MOLLIE OR NEAT NELLY? 

You can tell a lot about a gardener just by driving by their house.  If the garden looks organized, clean and tidy then chances are they are a NEAT NELLY.  Neat Nellies have very distinct characteristics.  Their lawn is generally weed free, freshly edged and mowed, their flower beds are all covered with a finely screened layer of compost and their shrubs are all pruned and never touching each other.  There is a sense of order and purpose, a feeling like there was some actual thought put into the design.  In the back yard you might find precisely defined areas of use such as a kids play area, a vegetable garden (geometrically laid out of course), a dog run and a common outdoor living area.  This time of year you would be hard pressed to find an errant leaf on the ground.  All the kid’s toys would be stored away in the garden shed for the winter and dad would have already changed the oil in the lawn mower, drained the hoses and readied the rest of the tools for the next season.  If you could get inside a Neat Nelly’s house (you would need an appointment of course and would have to remove your shoes) you would notice that all the spices were arranged alphabetically in the kitchen and in the bedroom the underwear was segregated into cotton, silk and synthetics and of course folded.

For Neat Nellies the gardening season ends when the last leaf falls off the tree, assuming that they even have any plants in their garden that dare to loose their leaves.  They don’t generally care about “winter interest”, rarely plant bulbs and are perfectly happy to plant their containers just once a year.  But despite their rigidity and need to control, they enjoy what they do and derive lots of pleasure out of their gardening experience.  I say more power to them.

Messy Mollies on the other hand are the antithesis of the above gardening personality.  Chaos and pandemonium seem to reign supreme.  The lawn is more like a meadow.  The line between the lawn and the beds is forever blurred beyond recognition.  This is a transitional zone where unimaginable battles are fought between legions of plant families for control of the land.  These battles continue into the shrub areas where larger players vie for light and space, sometimes smothering their neighbors and other times using them for support but always touching each other like they are at a Leo Buscaglia lecture.  There is no such thing as “personal space” in a Messy Mollie’s garden.

The “design” of this garden is actually very complicated and multi-layered, the result of a heavily leaning right brained gardener.  Plants are mostly bought on impulse and then eventually worked into the garden.  There is always a stash of purchased but unplanted plants waiting in the wings.  You will find lots of garden structures such as arbors and trellises where vines are clamoring up and down with gay abandon.  Plants might even be touching the house, a personal horror for a Neat Nelly.  There is an endless variety of plant material, all celebrated for its unique qualities and its indispensible role in the overall design.  Although it may be subtle, everything in this garden has a function.

If you were to go inside a Messy Mollie’s house (the door is always open) you would discover that both the dishwasher and the clothes dryer were essentially storage facilities.  The spices would be organized under some sort of cosmic system and the underwear would still be in the dryer. 

The gardening season is never over for Messy Mollies.  They are forever tweaking their plantings, enjoying every season of the year for what it has to offer.  The majority of their plants do in fact loose their leaves and they love bulbs, especially the little minor ones that naturalize so well and provide such a pleasant discovery when least expected.  In their own special way they are just as controlling as Nelly and enjoy gardening just as much.  But don’t put the two together or they will fight like cats and dogs.