Although it feels like the Gamaches have always been part of the fabric of Three Pines, Armand and Reine-Marie don’t officially move to the village until the tenth book in the series, The Long Way Home. Their brick house sits on the edge of the Village Green, and their garden, located in the back of the house, becomes a place of peace and reflection for the Gamaches, along with a gathering place where they spend time with their family and friends.
“Reine-Marie stopped, stooped, and picked a weed out of their front garden. She showed it to Myrna, who clapped. It had become their running joke, from their early days in the village, when Reine-Marie and Armand had “weeded” the spring garden, only to discover they’d left the weeds and taken out most of the perennials.” – Glass Houses
Perhaps not natural green thumbs, the Gamaches still grow a variety of flowers, weeds, and trees in their garden, including:
Lavender: An Old World flower that dates back, at the very least, to Greek and Roman times. “Lavender Haze” was a term coined in the 1950s to describe a certain state of love. Taylor Swift heard the phrase while watching an episode of Mad Men, which inspired her to pen the eponymous song.
Weeds: A generally undesirable plant that dates back to the invention of agriculture. A.A. Milne famously quipped in Winnie-the-Pooh, “Weeds are plants too, once you get to know them.”
Apple Trees: Also known as Malus domestica, were originally cultivated in Asia and subsequently brought to America by colonists. William Blaxton, the first European settler to occupy what is today known as Boston, grew the first apples and named them “Yellow Sweeting”.
Do you have any tips for managing weeds in your garden?
39 replies on “The Gardens of Three Pines: The Gamache Garden”
In the long game of gardening, weeding is the one task that brings instant gratification.
When we had our house(we now live in an apartment) we had about 200feetof roadside ditch! Long story .short,thechurchwas being torn down to build new we decided to bring the old foundation rocks home and build a rock garden there several pickups later. We were young and the work was not hard! Eventuly it was filled with lots of ground cover from pholx and lilly of the valley …which takes over if you are not careful! and several others many years later it was remarked on by people that drove by! Again many years later it was hard to keep up but being out there in the”ditch ” was peaceful and relaxing The buyer said “you have floers evrywhere”!! We became older and maybe wiser and did not want to break hips or other bones and the decision was made to sell. We missed mostly the gardens the next bummer/fall but have become used to y few hangers and have a community garden plot a short drive away I know alot of the flowere in the booksand can see them in my mind as I read Debbie
I am a lackadaisical gardener. I find it difficult to keep order. If a plant volunteers who am I to evict it? Recently native plants have been added by collecting seeds from the wild. Very satisfying. This year the black eyed Susan’s have spread, last year it was the purple cone flowers. A garden is full of surprises.
When my children were young, my work day as a teacher made me the last person to arrive home each afternoon. I noticed that while we never sprayed for weeds, we never seemed to have more than one or two dandelions in the lawn. One day I commented about that thinking it was a “lucky “ accident. My husband informed me that it was no accident; he
made our three children each pull ten dandelions before they entered the house each day after school!
When I was growing up, my dad would pay us kids a cent a weed, as long as we had dug up the root with it. We had so many weeds that he amended the deal to 1/2 a cent after the first hundred. That was when a comic book or chocolate bar was 10¢.
I take a wander through the yard almost every day and pull weeds as I see them. This year has been terrible for little elm seedlings; maybe it’s a strategy to have some elm trees despite losing so many to Dutch Elm Disease. No matter how thorough I think I’ve been in my weeding there are always more to get but if you tackle them every day the numbers do decrease.
I became a gardener of flowers because I was a poor gardener of veggies. I grew up having daily gardening duties as my mother canned or froze the veg for winter. As a grad student I gave priority to my studies when I had to…and alas was kicked out of our community gardening patch for having excessive weeds. So once we settled on a home in the Midwest of USA, I kept to flower gardening. I have my Peaceful Place much like Pooh’s thoughtful space. It has many different plants native and nonnative varieties. It brings joy and hummingbirds and bees. The dense tangle of clematis provide space for homes for small birds like the Jenny Wren. It is balm for the spirit. I also have wind chimes that are low pitched. I wish all a place to be “enough” and at peace.
Thank you so much for this feature. I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Lexington KY. There is about a 2 foot piece of earth around 3 sides of my patio. It is small, which suits me fine, because I can’t bend or stoop very well anymore, so there is a minimal of upkeep. It is filled with perenials and has annuals in pots. It is my greatest joy living there and my neighbors love it too. Its the best place to be in early morning when it is cool so I can look out over lavender, day lillies, echinesia, phlox and black eyed susans. I’ve been away from it all summer due to a broken pelvis. Luckily, a friend is caring for it and I’ll be returning to it next weekend. I can’t wait.
My favorite comment/quote on weeds:
“A weed is a wildflower in the wrong place.”
Thank you so much for sharing the Gardens of Three Pines. I am a novice gardener but I have always loved and appreciated gardens. Every summer my family would take a trip into Halifax to walk through the Public Gardens. We also visited my mother’s very first school teacher who had beautiful gardens. She and my grandmother always had lavender in their gardens so that is a staple of mine along with lupines which grow wild at our summer home in Nova Scotia. For years my mother worked hard to get the lupines to grow at our summer home, but it wasn’t until after she was gone that they really took hold. I planted one lupine in my garden this year but the bunnies at it down to the roots. At least I had the joy of those flowers for a few days. I love the memories that certain flowers and plants evoke for me. That is the true joy of a garden to me, whether it is a planned garden or nature’s own.
Before I became a gardener myself, when I will still in high school, I thought I would surprise my gardener father by weeding all the prickly leaved dandelions out of his border. When he came home from work, he looked at his garden and said, “Where are all my Oriental poppies…?” He was, indeed, surprised.
In all the places I’ve called home (18 since I was 21) I’ve had some kind of garden. Flowers, hanging plants, bushes, trees, veggies, fruits, herbs and yes even weeds. Weeds like squirrels, get a bad rap IMO. I like things that grow and stretch and wave in the wind. I’ve nourished bunnies, squirrels, wild turkeys, hundreds of birds and deer. Not to mention feral cats. All are welcomed to visit. If you give wildlife their own garden of decadence to dine in, then they’ll stay out of your more valued one. I guess you could say, I share the planet WELL, with my neighbours. I like my gardens to express itself, although SHARING the space is key. I do pull those (tall spiny ones, that require gloves removing) overbearing green weeds, that overtake and crowd their neighbours. I’m definitely not a sculptured manicured kinda girl. When we give TLC, sunlight, nutrition, space to grow, speak softly and kindly, with the occasional stroke of tenderness, gardens will flourish. When you don’t know or don’t label the weeds from the flowers, you can just appreciate their beauty. When I sit in my garden, I stretch my arms and it feels so good. That is exactly how my garden feels when I just allow it to stretch too! Don’t be shy to immerse yourself in all the beauty that surrounds you. It is Mother Nature’s very best gift…
For the fascinating story of apples in America read The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphrey. Here is an interesting review of it:
https://rclr.ca/2026/07/06/the-ghost-orchard-by-helen-humphreys-pub-2017/
Welcome to my Garden of Weeden! We moved to the Appalachian Foothills two years ago. I was very distraught when the Township mowed the 4mile Run! So many wild beauties! All they saw, as well as the many farmers here, were weeds! This year, with gas prices high and low on manpower, they did not mow!!! Each walk with our collie (like Lassie) Sir Bron Y’aur, is a new discovery. A wild clematis called a Leather Flower, a North American native plant that garden groups were not familiar! A start sells for $49.99! where is my shovel! Lol. I so appreciate this experience of wild weeds! Let them grow!!! The Gamache’s learned later in life the joy of a garden. It’s never too late!
There’s been only one mention of the value of mulch. Certainly it
takes energy to get the first batch on the soil, but touch-ups after
that are quite doable.
It was reading Ruth Stout’s book on “mulch gardening” that showed
me that I, too, could have a garden. I’ve had wonderful gardens ,
with little weeding, ever since.
Ruth Stout’s gardening methods are wonderful!
She sure influenced a lot of us.
I love the flat brown box method with mulch on top. Looks clean and tidy in no time!
I live in a Senior community in McMinnville, Oregon.
We have a lovely community garden space that is enclosed in an 8′ fence to keep out the deer. Our Hillside deer (our community) don’t eat the lavender or rosemary. I enjoy being in the garden 😊.
I also have saved a plant from my mother. It’s an oxalis which I can always remember being in her kitchen. Since I am now 92, I know that one of my children will want to carry on with this lovely plant, inside in NY or outside in the Carolinas.
The Gamache garden certainly has elements similar to mine. Apples, lavender, a place to gather with friends or just have some quiet time alone. My garden is at the front of my house and includes both flowers and veggies in lots of pots and raised beds (to thwart the gophers). The Gravenstein apple trees have been just down the hill for decades, so we are just caretakers of them. Weeds are just a part of the whole. Sometimes the nasturtium and morning glories become invasive like weeds, but are such beautiful colors, which saves them from being pulled out. Garden are things of beauty and a job forever, but gardeners like it that way.
Although I live in a townhouse with a pocket handkerchief of a back yard, I have converted every inch of it into a garden, with an angel wing swirling fountain in the middle. It is my ‘cathedral close’ where I read and pray most summer mornings, with coffee in hand. Birdsong provides a cheery choir. There are weeds – pretty ones – which I allowed to grow, but now they have so covered the ground that I’ll have to hire a professional to dig them out. A life lesson perhaps? I love the fact that the Gamaches inherited a garden at Three Pines and that they love its stillness and beauty as I do mine.
I’ve been gardening since I had my first flower bed at the age of 10. My only sure remedy for weeds is to pull them as soon as you see them; I’m constantly weeding and watering, changing my pot plants around the patio, etc. Thank you for giving us a look at Jane’s Garden and the Gamache Garden.
Love my garden and don’t worry much about the weeds. And it’s true, the deer don’t seem to care about
eating them. They do love the hostas though, and day lilies and hydrangeas and impatiens, on and on.
Some creature is now even eating my parsley. But it’s a delight to wander around the garden and just breathe
it all in, especially after a freshening rain.