Five o’clock and it’s still light.
Just. Ten minutes later and the darkness falls heavily, a thick, velvet-fronted safety curtain descending across the stage the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half light... but still. Five o’clock and still light? Come on!
This is encouraging. This is... inspiring! I mean, if the weather hadn’t been so filthy today, I’d’ve been out there till the dark dropped, beavering away, tidying away, Getting Things Ready. But the thing is, I haven’t been, and the garden waits patiently for me to get back into the swing, to do more than potter about with the pots and containers outside the back door, to venture beyond tickling the hellebores and the snowdrops and oohing and ahhing at their resilience and beauty and properly engage in a physical way, with my body, with the real space, and not just the idea in my head. Not that there’s anything wrong with spending the winter making plans for next year’s garden – it’s the perfect time for such airy castles. But there’s a strange alchemy whereby our minds fail to draw the full benefit from the garden till our bodies engage with the space and its contents in a very tangible way. I rather like the topsy-turvyness of this.
I wonder what our gardens think of us over winter? I wonder, in particular, if my garden knows that I spend my time looking after other people’s gardens, and tackling mine in very sporadic fits and starts over the colder, darker months. I wonder if it feels cast-aside, jealous even. Above all, I wonder if this bit of land knows it’s a garden, and in knowing, cares that little bit more about what the humans that move about within its bounds find to occupying themselves with. The natural world, as so many who have come to know and love it appreciate, seems supremely ambivalent to human concerns – wounded by our destructive activities, certainly, but dispassionately so, and beyond any response to our joy or pain. But I can’t help but entertain the thought that our presumption in claiming a little patch of the planet for ourselves, and calling it a garden, might somehow conjure a stronger bond between us, one vulnerable to feelings of abandonment.
Naturally this is the very worst of anthropomorphism. And yet... that’s how we work, isn’t it? How we make meaning? It’s why we see faces in the clouds and on street furniture and Jesus in toast, why we ‘translate’ what our cats and dogs are saying for the benefit of anyone who’ll listen. As anyone who’s ever had to leave a garden will know, there’s a pull there, a tug at our selves, and it doesn’t feel like it all goes one way. The genius loci gets a bad press these days, but you don’t cease to exist merely because you’re out of fashion. God help any of us if that ever became the case.
This month, I’m seeking to reassure my garden coaching clients that they needn’t feel guilty or panicked if the only gardening they’ve done these past few weeks has been in their heads – mentally rearranging the flower beds, wishing the shed was both closer to the house and less of an eyesore, or flicking through seed catalogues and dreaming of the sun-kissed magic that could result from the contents of a few small envelopes. And I do truly believe that with gardening, as with so many things, the busiest of our efforts benefit greatly from a period of rest and reflection, that any nagging feelings that you should be out there doing stuff, or sowing things (with the possible exception of a few things like chillies), and that if you aren’t you’re somehow Not Keeping Up, should be given short shrift. I stand by this as sound advice. At the same time, I know the benefits of being mindfully present outside, beyond the back door, in that space I call my garden, at all times and in all weathers. Thankfully, this can be achieved just as well with a cup of tea and an interest in birdsong as it can with a wheelbarrow, gloves and secateurs. There are times when all of the above can be employed together, but each of us needs to find those times out for ourselves, and resist all pressures, both external and internal, to be always doing.
What does your garden think? It just want you to engage. I don’t think it cares how.
A year of garden coaching
I’m very excited about my new venture – it’s a way for me to work with more people than I can physically get around to, helping them to make the very best of their gardens in a way that suits the life they lead. There are a very few spots remaining at the introductory price, please click here to book a place.
Click here to sign up for weekly #gardeninspo52 posts and blog updates direct to your inbox.
Sign up for the monthly newsletter below
Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, blogger, podcaster, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking the image above.
