Creating the illusion of wealth with a garden

I've known some wealthy people who can really show it off. And it's fun to see the big houses, fancy cars, that sort of thing. And yeah, I gotta admit to being a little jealous, and definitely impressed by displays of wealth. Or rather, displays of prosperity, of success, and a desire to share that with friends.

I didn't grow up poor, but I've lived in some poor neighborhoods. I know what it looks like to live in a world where tiny apartments are filled up with lots of people to just cover the rent, cars are patched together as best they can be to keep running, standing in the cold waiting for the bus, living on rice because meat is too expensive. And I gotta tell you, poverty sucks.

But every once in a while I would see a flower, maybe in a pot. And to most people, it's seen as a "woman's touch", but to me it's so much more. It's that tiny bit of beauty that seeks to go beyond just getting by, and being poor. It's a display of wealth.

When I visited the wealthy neighborhoods I saw lush landscaping. There were neatly trimmed hedges, tall trees, and lots of flowers. Of course in the poor neighborhoods the grass was all dead, and the plants, if they existed at all, were scraggly. And I decided that when I got rich, I would have lush landscaping.

I never got rich, but I got the landscaping. I bought a tiny house (the one I'm in now) and was determined to make it "jewel-like". I immediately started working on the garden. I bought plants as cheaply as I could find them, often from the local K-Mart from the area where the plants had been set aside as unsaleable. My motto was to buy them small and care for them. And now, over 25 years later, the effect is amazing.

I could walk around my garden and tell you which plants I bought for $1.97, and which plants were cuttings that friends gave me for free, but that would take too long. Instead I can point to the plants that I spent too much money on, like twenty bucks, here and there.

I visited gardens, I looked at the wealthy neighborhoods. I learned how to care for plants the way that people with big budgets did. What I found was that with a little bit of effort on a consistent basis I could create the look of a wealthy garden without spending much money. It's been a lot of work, but it really hasn't cost me a lot of money. It's a labor of love, and I love showing it off, as my illusion of wealth.