By John W. Forssen

Special contributor

Eiffel beans?

The name should give them away, but let us start at the beginning.

In a space about the size of a storage shed behind my house, I keep a small, raised-bed garden. It measures perhaps three feet by four feet, and, until this year, I have routinely planted pumpkins there, a colorful tribute to the bounty of the fall harvest. 

I should mention that this is really a garden within a garden, for it is contained within a larger space (16 by  24), the site of my summer shower – kept private by a lattice-work fence which supports a thick and unruly growth of clematis and climbing hydrangea. The interior of the fence is fitted with rough benches on three sides, suggesting that people might sit about, wine in hand, and watch the pumpkins grow.

I should mention, too, that I am recently retired, so there is an element in most things I do these days that reveals a sudden and perhaps unexpected abundance of time. In the garage, for example, now that the cars are outside in the good weather, I am drying the contents of several elderly cans of latex paint, preparing for their eventual disposal. It’s a time-consuming process, more so than one might think at first; but the spreading layers of paint, poured with care each day onto a broad sheet of plastic, are slowly creating a thing of beauty – an accidental Jackson Pollock which may, by its own merits, demand preservation. How often, I wonder, is coincidence the handmaiden of greatness?

My small garden, to return to the focus of this piece, was, from the beginning, an eccentric piece of artistry – a combination of creeping thyme and lavender and an assortment of rocks, a single 4 by 4 post and the twisted elbows of several alder roots recovered from a neighboring swamp. If this story were developing around a crime, the garden would at least be “a thing of interest.”

Pumpkins, I thought, would be the crowning glory of this small space, and, in order to give them a position of prominence, I created a “pumpkin tower” out of an over-turned pot from which I had cut away the bottom, filling the resulting space with soil. At a height, then, I deposited several carefully selected seeds, picturing a cascade of foliage, a veritable river of bright flowers and, eventually, a diluvian crop of pumpkins spilling over the elevated sides of my small garden.

Despite my preparations, however – indeed, despite the hope upon which all aspirations are built, there was an unexpected problem: bees. Without them, there can be no pumpkins, and, for two of the three years that I pursued my pumpkin dream, there was no power between heaven and earth that could lure a bee into my back yard. The front of the house, where my wife keeps her flowers is alive with fragrance and color throughout the growing season, an irresistible temptation. My few pumpkin flowers, at their best, were redundant.

And I was no more successful the following year when I decided that I would pollinate these plants myself. Apparently, there is more to that operation than visiting the flowers, one after another, knocking their pollen-bearing organs about with a stick. My wife said I lacked finesse.

Through much of this season, as a consequence, my small garden, lush though it was with creeping thyme and lavender, had an unfinished quality to it – like a song that stops short of its final note.

Then I remembered the bean, that perennial grammar school science project, undertaken with a single seed, a jelly jar lined with thick blotting paper and an occasional splash of water. Like magic, these seeds flourished, developing roots and blossoms and eventually tiny green fingers that promised to be beans – all before our disbelieving eyes.

The last package of bean seeds at our local hardware store was of the pole variety, a bean that climbs, as Jack would readily tell you.

And climb they did.

When the first shoot appeared, coiling as if to signal its need for support, I set a bamboo garden stake in the ground and gave the tiny plant a single, encouraging twist. By the end of the week, the bean had topped the stake, so I attached another and then another after that – and still others, as the bean continued its ascent. 

It goes without saying that such slender stuff would be hard-pressed to endure along a straight axis for more than a foot or two, and, as it began to arch gracefully, additional stakes were required to prop the base and cantilever the increasing trajectory of the primary structure.

At last check, this marvelous plant has reached a height of nine feet (although its length is closer to 12), incorporated well over a dozen garden stakes, several feet of string and one palm-sized stone from the driveway. The stone is a counter-weight. It dangles from a stake stitched into the mix so it travels away from the general drift and sway of the plant.

And – miracle of miracles – this architectural curiosity, without so much as a sniff from the bees of the front yard, has produced a true bean, a new breed the elevation of which has earned it the title of Eiffel bean.

Perhaps next year, we will have a competition.