Gardens

On Sunday night I went to bed with "Something Understood" on BBC Radio 4, in which Mark Tully explored the idea of gardens & their healing power. I suddenly found myself wide awake as I contemplated the role of gardens in my life.

It has changed as the years have gone by.

In my childhood my parents had a large garden. For me it was a play area, a place to explore. The roses were always a source of some anxiety as my brother was a haemophiliac so their thorns were a danger. A scratch could kill. Then there was the lawn, the venue for cricket, football, high jumping, occasionally daisy chain making. Further up were the apple trees to climb, the rhubarb to eat almost straight from the ground with a bag of sugar. There was an old air-raid shelter, remnant of the Second World War. This became our den. From the flat roof of this structure we waged war with the neighbouring children on their air-raid shelter, on the other side of the hedge.

It was from this garden that many of the flowers came to make my wedding bouquet. My bridesmaid, training as florist at the time, actually made the bouquet the morning of the day.

After that, gardens left my horizons to a great extent. Our first home had a virtually vertical garden up a crag. It was a wilderness when we arrived. As we were only renting it, & expecting to be there only about a year, a wilderness it remained except for a bit of scything when the grass had got so tall that it got into my eyes when I hung the washing out. But as the cottage was in the middle of the countryside, in an AONB (area of outstanding beauty), next to an RSPB bird sanctuary, a garden was no great loss. There was just so much more to explore out there.

Our second home was an upstairs flat so no garden. But again the view from the back window was of open fields & from the front was the Kent Estuary, part of Morecambe Bay. 

In this time we visited some gardens, both those of friends & publicly opened ones. My appreciation of them lay in the beauty of the flowers & trees, the wildlife they encouraged, rather than the mood of the garden. The exception, I suppose, is Graythwaite Hall garden, a fabulous garden for rhododendrons & azalea. For me, it was spoilt by excess pain as I realised the time had come to get a wheelchair if going out was to be any pleasure in future. The trip had been one drag from one bench to the next, in agony all the way. The only real relief was a long sit down in a pub afterwards to recover a bit.

However, once in the chair, one garden in particular stands out in my memory, that at Villandry, in the Loire Valley. The chateau itself was not wheelchair accessible so the Fox went in by himself while I sat in the garden & so discovered its peace.

Villandry

Then we moved here & I really discovered the joy of a garden. At least part of what made us decide this was the place for us was the garden. The longer we have lived here the more I've appreciated its colours, its changing seasons, its plants & wildlife, above all its peace which tells me no matter what happens in life things can't be that bad when there's a little bit of heaven like this to disappear into, to drink in that peace.

Our back garden as it was when we arrived

Since then we have visited other gardens, some very memorable, such as the Chinese gardens in Sydney & in Vancouver. The former we visited on a busy day, yet even so, once in the gardens, which are right in busy Darling Harbour, the hurly-burly of life disappeared. You could see the tops of traffic hurling by, yet their noise & bustle didn't intrude. I suspect by now, a few years on, you won't even be aware of the traffic.

Chinese Garden of Friendship dominated by skyscrapers of Darling Harbour, Sydney

The green tranquility of the Chinese Garden of Friendship, Darling Harbour, Sydney

Then there are gardens that amuse. In particular my  mind goes to the gardens in the Hunter Valley with their section for children, illustrating nursery rhymes & children's books.

Mad Hatter's Tea Part, Hunter Valley Gardens, Australia

 

Humpty Dumpty, Hunter Valley Gardens, Australia

But I always come back to our garden, particularly the herb garden & the bog garden which I still manage to tend. I suppose, like most suburban dwellers, the garden is our opportunity to get in touch with a different rhythm of life, Nature's rhythm, a placed to escape from the worries of everyday life, an oasis of calm. Our back garden is our private park, to love the various visitors, mainly avian. The herb garden is a source of whole panoply of scents, flavours & colours.

The herb garden