Published on Saturday, August 30, 2025

By Victoria Torley

Well, it can be a great excuse for someone like me who hates housework. “Can you do the dishes, laundry, vacuuming and mopping today? All that gardening today just wore me out.”

How about this one: “No, I can’t go to the supermarket, the roses need spraying and pruning.” I like that one. Roses are an easy mark; they always need something.

Okay, okay, no more excuses. Why do we garden?

We garden because there is nothing better than a home-grown, sun-kissed tomato on the salad. Don’t put them in the refrigerator first; chilling them makes them lose flavor.

We like green peppers that go Crunch when we bite into them.

We garden because really fresh herbs have so much more flavor than the ones in the stores.

We get out in the garden because we like to feel the sun on our backs and the dirt under our fingers.

We garden because we like to water our plants. When we water them, we like to point the hose skyward and let the water shower down on us,  it makes us feel like kids again.

We garden because we like to have really fresh flowers in the house, even if they are little flowers in a tiny vase that used to hold toothpicks.

We garden because we like the feel of the early morning dew. We like to be up early while the sun is still behind the trees and slowly sneaks up on us, warming us slowly.

We garden because the bare, naked green grass just wasn’t satisfying.

And we garden because there isn’t enough frustration in our lives already.

Oh yes, gardening is frustrating. Take radishes, for example. They sprout quickly and then slump. Or they grow beautifully but have a stringy root. They grew fine “Up North,” but here they need to be babied with extra sand and rice husks to lighten the soil and a few extra minerals.

We get frustrated because “Up North”, we planted things in full sun and they flourished. In Costa Rica, they need shade, but we didn’t know that and we lost a lot of plants before we figured it out.

We get frustrated because we have leaf-cutter ants that strip a tree overnight, and iguana the size of...  well, they are bigger than a breadbox, and they love to eat our veggies.

We get frustrated because the neighbor’s cows can strip a patch of sweet corn down to nothing in an hour and then head off to have hibiscus for dessert.

Yup, we get frustrated a lot, but we still garden. We fence out the cows and use tons of Omitox on the ants, and we keep at it.

Plat of the week. The San Juan (Brunfelsia pauciflora), also known as "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," is a free-flowering perennial shrub, usually cultivated to about 1.5 m tall, but can grow up to 3 m. It is well known as a butterfly-attracting shrub. Under full sun, it can produce an abundance of fragrant purple flowers that gradually turn blue or mauve and finally white with aging.

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Find more interesting stories about gardening in Costa Rica on the AM Costa Rica Garden page. Questions on this article, Ms. Victoria Torley, gardener columnist, can be reached by emailing victoriatorley1@gmail.com
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