Until my husband and I bought our first house one snowy March, I thought I had escaped the mania that infected my mom and her mom. I was wrong. Mere weeks after we moved in, I started planning a garden.

        I read dozens of books, ordered dozens of catalogs, and sketched elaborate designs featuring every element that appealed to me: a pond, a summerhouse, a vine-draped pergola, a twelve-foot rock wall surrounding the backyard, espaliered fruit trees, a prairie, a bog, a thyme lawn... all crowded onto a property that measures 40 feet by 150 feet, including the house.

        When the snow melted and the ground thawed, I planted two birch trees in the front yard. Then three lilacs and an apple tree. Then two sand cherries. After that, I dug out beds so fast our heads spun. The neighbors' heads may still be spinning.

        Why did this obsession strike me in particular? I can only answer that, between the ages of two and six, I lived in Seattle in a house with three backyards. The first was a lawn with formal plantings--an ivied trellis footed by violets, a grove of rhododendrons, a bed of pansies. Behind that stretched the working backyard, with pears, blackberries, rows of vegetables, and a tire swing hung from a giant tree. The third backyard was forested with flowering dogwoods whose blossoms I could only see when marched regally through them on my uncle's shoulders.

        That garden is burned into my memory. I spent hours crouched among the plants and animals, my senses inundated and my mind unleashed. And it could have been there, as I patiently waited for a roly-poly bug to uncurl and crawl across my palm on its tickly feet, that the longing for a garden was planted in me.

        We moved from Seattle's green-drenched landscape to the subtle-toned desert of southern Idaho, where a gardener's main work was watering the precious plants daily to coax them into surviving. That necessary chore produced amazing results: blueberries we could pick fresh and eat in our cereal, roses blooming profusely against the high chain-link fence, and a nectarine tree so laden every year that, had we not picked the fruits religiously, it would have collapsed under its own weight. I endured the labor and enjoyed the results.

        After high school, I moved to Minnesota and a series of college dormitories, then apartments. I didn't think about gardens for years except to show a fond interest in my mom's and my grandma's. I didn't pine for a garden of my own. I didn't even cultivate healthy houseplants; periodically I would acquire a few, which gradually wasted away until I gave them to more attentive friends.

        When George and I bought our first house in Saint Paul, I hardly noticed the yard we also purchased, a rectangle of weed-infested lawn barely surrounding our new home. Only after the dust of unpacking settled did I realize how integral the dismal yard was to that place. It supplied the view, or lack thereof, from every window. In front, it served as a ball field for the neighborhood children. In back, where the chain link fence paralleled those of our neighbors and of their neighbors as well, it offered the antithesis of the private retreat that I didn't, until then, know I wanted.

        We were living in a vast, barren public park. If we were renting, I would have started looking for another place immediately, even if moving meant pleading with George and forfeiting the security deposit. But our mortgage agreement chained us to the property until selling was financially feasible.

        I was placing too much value on privacy, I lectured myself. The neighborhood was in other ways ideal. We had stumbled into one of those rare communities that had managed to hang onto its heart--welcoming new members, retaining its residents for decades, encouraging strangers to converse on the sidewalk--all cemented by a network of regular festivities, friendships, and exchanges of work and child care. Still, I hated being visible to a host of people, even our friendly neighbors, whenever I ventured outside. I hated having to tell the kids they weren't welcome to play on my front doorstep. The need for privacy, the need to impose some barrier between our outdoor space and the eyes and voices of other people, gnawed at me.

        I envisioned an eight-foot stone wall surrounding our property, fronted by a massive iron gate. It would inject stability, security, and character; it would cost an arm and a leg. George pointed out diplomatically that it might also send a strong negative message to our new neighbors.

        The wall metamorphosed into a less imposing six-foot cedar privacy fence bordering the back and sides, with a short, friendly picket fence in front. Decorative arched gates and a matching trellis with climbing roses would announce that it was a feature rather than a barrier. George shrugged his agreement. I checked prices. We could afford it... in a few years.

        We bought the house in March, a dark, gloomy month in Saint Paul. Snow cloaked the ground and Spring was six weeks off. I spent part of almost every day on our three-season porch despite the cold. There I huddled in a beat-up chair and soaked up the sun that poured through the bank of south-facing windows.

        I tended to swivel my chair to the left so my eyes could feast on the neighbor's mature jack pine (Pinus banksiana) hanging over our eastern boundary, an oasis of green in the gray landscape. From it, my gaze would roam west over white snow and scattered tree trunks and houses and cars, finding nothing worth a pause. I'd turn back to the east, skimming over the bland scenery to linger on the pine, drink up its greenness, trace the arcs of its branches. That tree was the only visible promise that Summer would return.

        I thought of my grandma's rock gardens and banks of evergreens, my mom's shrubs and lattices. Their properties might be located in a desert, but even in Winter, they possessed a presence and a stark beauty.

        Maybe nostalgia was the final necessary ingredient for the germination of this gardener. One moment I floundered helpless in my landscape, and the next I was thrust onto solid ground as I realized that I could satisfy my own cravings for greenness. I could conceal the houses across the street. Just as my mom and grandma had done, I could paint my own Winter view.

        I went to investigate a local bookstore's Gardening section. It was larger and more appealing than I expected; shelf after shelf displayed oversized books, mostly hardcover, many of their bindings green or printed with flowers, so that together they suggested a lush garden at the height of Summer. I drew closer, anticipation unfurling in my chest, and ran a finger along their cool, glossy spines. Their titles awoke more images--The Garden Path, The Undaunted Garden, The Romantic Garden, Stonescaping, Glorious Gardens, Water in the Garden.

        Slowly I pulled Glorious Gardens off the shelf and caught my breath as the colorful photograph on the front cover slid into view. It captured the essence of Springtime. Blossoming apple trees arched over a grass path that curved around slim feathered conifers and low pink heathers. This was what I craved, this scene and others as evocative. I spread open the book and leafed through it. Photos enlivened every page, varied in mood and season, and true to the title, all were glorious.

        Closing it, I chose several others, then made a beeline for the nearest chair.

        The top book on my pile was called Living Fences. From his first sentence, in an introduction entitled "Plants for Privacy and Beauty," Ogden Tanner matter-of-factly expressed my longings. "Is it too much to expect," he asks the reader, "that a house, the single largest investment that most people will make, be not just a shelter, but an oasis, a place where peace and privacy can be enjoyed at the end of a busy day?"

        "Yes!" I wanted to scream right there in the bookstore.

        He continues: "Why, then, is it that modern building practices make that serenity nearly impossible to secure?" He was writing about our house, set within fifteen feet of taller neighboring houses on both sides, its dining room window looking straight into the kitchen next door, its back chain link fence restricting movement but not sight.

        Tanner describes the financial and social barriers to putting up a wall or high fence. As alternatives, he proposes hedges, vines, and espaliers. "The solution is a living fence," he says, "a wall of plants that, with branches and foliage, will screen out views and gently, tactfully, reinforce boundaries."

        By the end of the first page, I began to hope that plants could not only enliven our dull landscape, but also increase our privacy. And unlike the fence, I could start adding them as soon as Summer arrived. I bought Living Fences. Then I went home to plan my garden.