Armand's Garden

[BEEPING] Hub and spoke. Audio collective. This is Rumble Strip by America Highellman. At the last years of my parents, I would come home with tons of free plants. And the driveway was just all plotted plants, all the way down the driveway, ready to be waiting to be planted. My father said, ask me one day, do you need so many? No, there's no such thing as too many plants. A few months ago, a listener called Victor wrote to me, and he said he'd met an extraordinary man in a tea house that used to be a chicken coop, deep inside, and elaborate garden, which runs down to a stream. Victor was looking at the house, which is for sale, and he had wandered into the garden and found himself in a wild place full of secret pots and boulevards and rare plants and trees, native and exotic. Armand Pachuan was sitting in the tea house, dividing bulbs, and offered to give Victor a tour. Armand's family is Kebukwa, and Armand grew up in this house, and he has been making this garden for 49 years. When I went to visit him, we sat in the tea house and drank coffee. We talked about gardening, and what God has to do with gardening, which it turns out is everything. It's funny, one of my strongest memories from childhood is finding my mother digging in her garden and talking to her plants, which I didn't understand at the time, but now I do. I'm not a very good gardener. I don't understand design, but I love my plants, and I love to think about the dirt under my plants. At the end of a long winter, I start dreaming about my plants. And sometimes I just look at a single plant or a tree for a really long time. And I get something, or I hear something? I don't know what it is, but I think Armand does. Here's Armand Patron. I was born here. And since age eight, I started doing landscaping. I used to work next door for the neighbor, a dollar an hour. And I would say about my dollars in order of plant. Do you remember your first-- It was a bearded iris. So you had a young interest in perennials? Yes, in all nature. It was just exciting to see things. All of this was created by God. No man. When I would go and dig up maple trees, the plant here, there were 12 footers. Where did you go to do that? Up the road in the woods. The root ball was outside the wheelbarrow. The trunk was on my shoulder going home. That was my life. Do you associate your garden with God? Yes. I'm just amazed at what she creates. And the guidance that he gives me. And what does it mean? Every time I do anything, I ask him for help. Even planting? Everything. Because without him, I can't fail. So what's the-- what kind of advice might you ask for if you're planting a rhododendron? OK, God, I'm going to put in this rhododendron. But show me the place where it should be. That way I'm planting it in the right place. And he guides me. He will guide you. It's just amazing. I grafted golden hornet crab apples. It's my favorite of all the crab apples, big yellow apples. And before I grafted them, God, I'm going to graft now. We're going to graft now you and I. And every graft that I do like that, they take. I can't do anything on my own. With God, nothing is impossible. But it's in his time, not yours. Did you have a sense that this was God's world when you were little? No. That came in my adolescence. That's when I finally got another-- a better association with God. How? It's hard to say. I know, but try it. Well, I came to be born again from the church next door, but their idea of plant people and gay people. I left that church and it ended up going to the Congregational Church in Lindenville. And I always had them for the first time in my life. I didn't have to pretend to be who I am. You didn't have to pretend not to be who you are. Yeah. They accepted me unconditionally. And that felt so great. And the first year there, I did a Christmas arrangement on the altar. And they thanked me for it. They were all saying, in clapping their hands, thank God we have a gay florist in our congregation. When did you know that you were gay? A while ago. But I didn't know the term. I come off the school bus every day crying. Because people would stand lean over the back of my seat, and over the front of my seat, and call me all these cruel names. And I couldn't go in the house crying. So I had to determine myself until I was back in good, you know. Was the garden useful for that? Yes. The gardens were my scape from the outside world. In the gardens, I was OK. I was acceptable. They were my friends. My relationship with my plants was a wonderful relationship. They knew what I thought of them. And they responded by incredible growth, flowers, everything. I was very faithful to the gardens, and they were very faithful to me. What do you get from plants that you don't get from people? Compassion, understanding. They're not telling me what to do. They accept me point blank. If you want a rose bush to bloom, more profuse than you've ever seen at bloomment in life. Before you plant your rose, put a pound block of lard in the bottom of the hole. A cup of epsom salt and banana peelings for the potassium. And then plant your rose. Well, what I did one year is I did one rose and I did it with the lard, the epsom salt, and the banana peelings. And then the second one was just manure. And then the third one just plain ground. Well, the one that was plain ground didn't do much. The one manure grew, you know, but the one with the lard was just phenomenal. You think it'd been there all its life. I had 50,000 daphril's blooming. 400 peenies blooming. My biggest role model in life is Rua Luita Catawas. King Louis XIV. One is good, but 100 is better. When I was part of the Linneville Fire Department, I did the gardens outside. I put in 3,000 geraniums. The greenhouse that used to be Elliot's. They gave us two full greenhouses full of geraniums. And a bunch of the firefighters came to help me with their trucks. And they noticed something about me once I was in the greenhouses with the geraniums. They sang to each other, "Arman really likes it, it's really into plants." "Oh my god, we need those. We need those." "Oh, get more than that." Why were you in the fire department? How did that come to pass? I always wanted to be in the fire department. I wanted one of those helmets. Well, just you have to say that. I always wanted one of those fire helmets on my head. And in my five years on the fire department, I raised over 15,000 for the department. For my dinners. And when the people would come for the dinners, there was this general camaraderie and gratitude that we were doing something like that for them and for the town. And they loved coming to it. And at Christmas time, I did a tree memorial tree and people could put a light on and honor someone for $6 and the ribbon. And then I had an open house that night at the fire station. We had 3,000 people come. The tower truck went down earlier and there was a Santa Claus in there on the truck. And I had four ministers reading the names of the people that were on the tree. And I told the last one, "When you get to the last name, give me a sign." And when he got to the last name and I saw the sign, then I made the motion to the other guy. And he turned the tree on. All red lights with clear lights. There was food at everything. And then all of a sudden up the street comes the tower with Santa Claus in a whole whole whole. You know for that small moment in time, it just felt like peace around the world. I got into the old fashioned roses. I started collecting them. Abandoned houses, whatever. I would go and I would dig. And I have 28 types of old antique heirloom roses. And the great thing about those is they bloom only once, but the fragrance is just overwhelmingly strong. You found them all out in the world? Yeah. And you dug them all up? I dug them all up. There was a house and a garden next to the sewer treatment plant. My mother and I were driving by. Of course I never leave without a shovel. And when I saw what was growing there and blooming, oh my God, Harrison's yellow rose. How often do you see that today? Well, I didn't think anyone lived there because the living room floor was in the basement. And the porch ceiling was on the floor. So I just automatically went out and started digging Harrison's yellow. A man comes out. He was so happy that someone was interested in his mother's old rose garden. And this is dating back over a hundred years. And if they're growing there, you know they're hearty. And my Harrison's yellow died. But I knew that place. I should go back there and get some more. Well, the house it came in. They had bulldozers there. I got there just in time. I got a piece of that Harrison's yellow still there. Plus I dug up some of the other roses that were there. There was a rose outside the Lyndon corner post office. Oh, it was so fragrant. A light soft pink. Well, I asked the post mistress of Lyndonville if I could take up a section of it. Well, thank God I did because the following year, all of that garden was destroyed. And so I have the last remaining rows of that that's been there for 50 years. Now, how can someone think of destroying something like that? I suffer from depression. And there was a day that I was really feeling down. And I ask God for help. And He never fails to help me. And all of a sudden, these two ladies stopped by. And they were just amazed at the flowers out front. I said, "Well, that's nothing. Come out back, go around the back and I handed hurt my pair of pruners. Pick yourself a bouquet of pennies. And nothing small is going to be at least 30 blossoms. Or else what's the point of even starting to pick?" And I met them out back in the formal lawn. And they had only like 15 in the bouquet. Well, when I got done with them, they had 45. And I photographed them as next to their car. And what that did to me, it lifted me right up in the air. My depression, my anxiety, everything was gone. And they asked me, "Why do you give such big bouquets away? Or why do you give so many flowers away?" I'm sharing with you what God shared with me. Can you see love in a garden? Yes. The plants have a relationship with you if you let them. They're not individuals, but they are individuals. Everyone wants to live. Everything wants to live. And here you step in and give an extra hand to them. And when I go around the gardens and I look at things, and I sit in a chair and I just have to stare at a particular plant or tree. It knows that. And it appreciates that because I'm acknowledging its existence. What is happening when you're sitting and looking at a plant or a tree? What is happening? Your soul feels exalted. You feel exalted. Your plants are exalted. I mean, what I have been told about my gardens more than anything else is, Arman, your gardens are so peaceful and so healing. For a short time in our history of our lives, we were raised to a better place for having been there. Thank you. Armond Patwan is moving up the road into the woods where he's starting a new garden. He's selling his house which was built in 1830. Come if you're a gardener. It's only 160,000. Thank you so much, Victor, for introducing me to Armond. And thanks to Willie Tobin, who provided the recording of the Red Squirrel that you heard and Song Sparrows recorded in the day and in the night. If you want to make a comment, please do just go to the website which is rumblestripvermont.com and then click on the show page and there's a comment box at the bottom of that page. You can also make a comment at Apple Podcasts which is super helpful because it helps new listeners find the show. I once again want to thank the person I don't know how to thank who sent me an anonymous gift in the mail that just blew me away. Rumblestrip is a proud member of Hub and Spoke, a collective of excellent independent podcasts. This week I want to recommend a great show from the Ministry of Ideas about the nature of time and how we've used and thought about time for a long time, how we manage time and how it manages us. You can find Ministry of Ideas at hubspokeaudio.org and click on the Ministry of Ideas and the show is called Out of Time. This is Rumblestrip, America, Hyalman. Thanks a lot for listening.