Desperate Houseplants

ABC's Desperate Housewives is a show about a group of neighbors on a permanently sunny suburban street called Wisteria Lane. It's a wry, soapy spoof of American culture narrated by a dead woman.

Rule number one in soap operas is that domesticated ladies must cook, clean and garden in very nice clothes and yet never get dirty. Now and again an artfully placed smudge will show up on a cheek or maybe an argument will involve the spray hose. Otherwise, these girls are flawless, along with their gardens.

Wisteria Lane is heavy on white picket fencing, arbors, porch railings and posts, all handsomely entwined with blooming Wisteria vines. Many scenes are filmed with purple or white Wisteria gently waving in the fake breeze (blown by big electric fans) figured somewhere in the composition. Wisteria blooms literally every day of every year in this neighborhood, without fail, and every flower is always at its loveliest peak.

Gardening is not a plot device on Desperate Housewives but it plays a pivotal role in defining the lifestyles of the central female characters. While some of them are shown actually working in their gardens - especially the Martha Stewart clone Bree Hodge (played by Marcia Cross) - others merely ignore their landscaping with equally fabulous results.

Gabby Solice (Eva Longoria-Parker) once kept a gardener in her employment but even after he was history (she broke off their affair to save her marriage) her landscape remained as beautiful as ever.

Every home in this make-believe neighborhood has virtuous green lawns, clear of dandelions and crabgrass. Nodding Agapanthus bloom in every border and never require dead heading. Roses flower ceaselessly without the application of fungicides. It never rains. (Or, if it does, the sun manages to keep shining in that Hollywood way.) Their lawns are not plagued by Japanese beetles or chinchbugs, and nothing gets mildew.

The only thing that requires a spray in their perfect enclave is sexy hair.

Desperate Housewives needs an additional story arc that more directly involves gardening.  Perhaps Susan Meyers (Teri Hatcher) could find a new hobby, one that does not involve looking for a man.  Something much more interesting. Vegetable Gardening, let's say.  

Susan starts with a few tomato plants that wilt suddenly and drop their fruit, which sends her in a panic to the garden supply store, where she spends a hundred dollars on products that guarantee "firm, ripe, juicy tomatoes just like your grandma used to grow!"

Susan's tomatoes wither and die despite her best efforts, but instead of discouraging her,  her experience with crop failure deepens her determination to grow a decent vegetable.  So she rents a tiller, trucks in compost, hires a cute carpenter (they have a fling but she dumps him for her new passion - the garden) to build cedar trellises, installs drip irrigation and starts a compost pile.

A couple of years pass.  Susan has expanded her vegetable beds considerably after removing three large trees, installed a cold frame, improved soil tilth and mulched heavily.  She rotates annually, plants green crops and picks off each potato beetle by hand.

One lovely afternoon when the Wisteria is in full bloom her old friends invite Susan to lunch. It's been so very long, they plead, since they have had a chance to catch up.  Oh, no, Susan declines, I cannot go out today.  You see, I have to apply the fish emulsion before noon, when the sun is very hot.

Another day?  Her friends suggest.  Unfortunately not, Susan replies.  There is too much to accomplish in the garden: so many weeds!  Check for squash bugs!  If I don't get the egg clusters there will be hell to pay in a few weeks!  And I have all that compost to spread!

Over a glass of wine her old friends shake their befuddled heads.  What happened to her, they ask?  We barely know her these days.  She used to be so much fun and now all she wants to do is garden.

Poor Susan, they all agree, she really needs to get a life!

Good Yews

By Shane VanOosterhout

The mighty yew (Family: Taxacaea; Genus Taxus) is a woody plant I used to disdain. How ridiculous of me. What I understand now is that I was judging the yew not on its own merits but instead because it is often used poorly in the home landscape.

I should clarify. The yew is used extensively in the home landscape because it possesses remarkable characteristics, mainly that it is nearly indestructible (tolerates abusive pruning) and is evergreen even in part sun to part shade.

Professional nursery growers love the yew because it propagates easily from cuttings. Landscapers love the yew because it is a budget-friendly shrub and provides instant green on the new, barren home site. In effect, it is probably the utilitarian nature of the yew that has contributed to unintended ugliness in our country.


Yews can grow 30-60 feet and spread 15-25 feet. There is a famous 300-year-old hedge on Bathurst Estate in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England that is 40 feet tall that requires the aid of cherry pickers and two days' work to keep its shapely figure.

As an ornamental the yew has quite literally defined the gardens of the upper classes for centuries. Descriptions of lovelorn women scampering breathlessly through tall shrubbery is a veritable staple of British Empire narrative.

In the United Kingdom the yew is highly romanticized, its history full of lore, long-associated with mysticism, Druid culture and fertility rituals. The heartwood was used for crafting the longbow, a formidably powerful weapon used for defense and hunting.


In most American landscapes yews are planted on small lots where homeowners eventually begin to fear them or hate them as is evidently plain in their need to attack them with saws or throw bicycles at them.

Pruned or not, the yew is at its most stately and beguiling when allowed to develop some stature. Larger yews have elegance; they are regal and bespeak their ancient story. The needles are superior in the garden, their glossy foliage dark and powerful, providing essential texture, form and color.

The best looking yews I spot in neighborhoods are those that were planted with the intent of "disguising" the air condition units or the electric box. They are generally ignored which means they are given permission to grow. After 10-15 years these yews become handsome specimens even if they do tend to look a bit goofy stuck out on the corner of the lot with no companions to keep them company.


Nervous types get antsy when it comes to the toxicity of the yew, *banning them from playgrounds or anywhere children might play. Sources are known to erroneously report that the fruit (aril) is poisonous. The author(s) of an article on Botanical.com state of the yew: "Poisonous Parts---Leaves, seed and fruit" but in fact the poison taxane resides in the seed not the flesh of the fruit. (A reminder to carefully check your sources when researching online).

As a maturing gardener I've come to love the yew in a way I never thought I would. Plants have little say in where they end up in the landscape and I suppose it is not always fair to blame them for looking ruinous. I've always said that if plants could talk we would not have to dig them up and relocate them 20-30 times before finding them a proper home.

If you have a spot in your landscape to plant just one single yew where it can gain some real size I highly recommend doing so. Resist shaping it. Let it be. In time you will discover why our cousins across the pond hold the beautiful, practical yew in such high esteem.



*41 percent of all poisonings reported occur in the home kitchen, 21 percent in the bathroom and 12 percent in the bedroom, leaving 26 percent for other places, according to Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Statistically. the garden is not such a dangerous place for children.