Related to the grief portal, we put up 90 meters of fence.
“It’s going to be a prison!” Rodolphe howled.
“Yup, and we are doing it.” I responded.
Daniel and Rumman and Rodolphe and I dug and hammered and wrenched and poured and tied through the coldest days of rain and wind, dry rigid knuckles cut by the mesh, Daniel’s tears mixed into the mud we tracked through the house. Finally after three months locked inside, the kittens got their garden back.
When the fence was just a perimeter of irrigation hose, I already realized the consequences: I am going to have to put in a garden.
Before the fence, the house sat in an expanse of lawn which we fretted about keeping cut. Who would drive the mower? Was it dry enough? How to replace the mower’s belt that was constantly burning because the grass was too wet and long. I said to Rodolphe “I’ll do the inside. You can have the outside.”
Now, sovereign, I have to take responsibility for all my Domaine, including the outside.
The luscious, sparkling, stressful grass gives way to the horizon of views: the valley, the forest, the orchard, the barns. Now those views are diffused.
“It’s not as bad as I expected,” says everyone. The views are still there and the green is there, but the spaciousness is not quite.
My first step was to “distract” from it with an architectural trick to draw the eye to white, a scattering of antique wrought iron garden furniture.
These would define new places, attracting attention, curiosity, a visit.
Each of these places needed to have some sort of delightfulness. To the east a flower meadow like the one I remember seeing in one of the design magazines. I had turned the corner down. The designer is Ah, it will be a Piet Oudolf perennial garden. Near the pool Rumman and I planted all the roses who had been waiting in their pots. There would be the vegetable garden, perhaps laid out along a path to encourage foraging. And the pool needs something – perhaps tropical and scented?
So: Put in plants.
I looked through magazines for plants that I liked.
Then I had the utterly silly idea of seeing if there was such a thing as a podcast about gardening. I saw this as a technical matter. I don’t know how to take care of the plants. And I’m tired of political podcasts.
The Royal Horticultural Society has a podcast with a mix of philosophy and tips, but it’s a bit superficial. I listened to The Beet, which is about edibles. This resonated with my permaculture certificate, but the vegetable garden is not going to be enough to re-charm this terrain. And this is not California. We cannot have a citrus hedge, charming as that might be.
Meanwhile, I started reading Elizabeth Gilbert‘s Big Magic. I agree with almost everything she says, and have experienced quite a bit of it already. So when she defined a creative life as driven by curiosity, I duly set myself to consider my curiosity during morning coffee and notebook time. Crash. I called Patrick in angst. “Could you come over and talk to me in between the two dinners I need to cook tonight?” I think this required Judy to keep Patrick’s dinner hot for an extra hour and a half but they graciously obliged my crisis.
“I’m not curious about anything. I think this is very bad. I’m ashamed. And it means I’m just going to pour all my energy into this house and business because it’s the thing in front of me.”
Patrick, who keeps track of things, reminded me of a rather long list of meaningful and satisfying aspects of the work I’m doing here and suggested gently that Gilbert might not have chosen the right word to describe the engine of my creativity.
The next day I searched my podcast ap for one of the other magazines Judy had given me, Gardens Illustrated. In the 10 days since having tea for dinner with Patrick, I have found myself inside of a kaleidoscope of purposes and practices of garden designers interviewed for the podcast “Talking Gardens”.
I wrote to Aimee, “it’s a very long time since I’ve taken so many notes on anything.” Plant names, pairings, analyses, techniques…
I’ve learned that I’ve already done some things right, thinking about defining different “rooms” (experiences) in the garden, putting in furniture, paths, and other “structural” elements before planting things, approaching the garden as a process rather than a finished product, and realizing that I need to do it in a way that’s a pleasure for me not another job or project.
I’ve also learned that garden design is quickly transitioning toward Permaculture’s primary commitment, “earth care”, with many designers prioritizing the well-being of pollinators and other insects, as well as re-use, localism, and artisanship. And the techniques! Flower gardeners are now using permaculture’s sheet mulching to manage weeds while respecting soil structure.
One striking aspect of these diverse interviews is that many of the famous people interviewed described their own gardens as very small or otherwise limited (not enough sun, not enough trees, no water feature, no view..) Many things these designers wished for are things we have here, unused. Worse than merely not appreciating this wealth, I had felt burdened by it.
Garden design, as I am starting to understand it, is both a service – to uplift people’s spirits and the quality of their contemplation and, increasingly, to care for nature.
The number one question I tend to get is “so what made you first interested in plants?” … Plants are the solution every major problem that faces our species… They are all underpinned by plants and our understanding of them. The fact that we see red green traffic lights is down to millions of years of co-evolution with plants. The very way we see the world and our color vision. The fact that our eyes are on the front of our head, rather than on the sides like most mammals, to give us binocular vision, to be able to see the world in 3D, is all down to plants. Really every question about humanity is down to millions of years of co-evolution with plants. So I think it’s fundamentally weird that not everyone is interested in plants.
James Wong, ethnobotanist, on the Talking Gardens podcast, 11.April 2023.
At the same time it is undeniably a massive pleasure for the people involved in doing it, from designers to garden managers to propagators. I have long been convinced by Emma Goldman’s insight that pleasure must be imbricated in politics – best known by the phrase, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” The anarchist concept “Love AND Rage” was perhaps best used by ActUp which brought joy and pleasure to the fight for AIDS healthcare. Despite this long thread of tradition, most of the activism I’ve been part of severed aesthetics from politics, and identified aesthetes as elites.
Contemporary garden design is the integrity of aesthetics and ethics that I’ve yearned for and worked to articulate in my work on Quality.
The first 20 plants arrived: gardenias, magnolias, and agapanthes for the pool, more roses for their garden. I repotted and lined them all up to get bigger while we search for mulch, and called their territory my “nursery”. The new collection of hellabores relieves the twiggy fuscias on their chains, now that I understand that potted plants must be rotated on and off-stage.
I pace through the kitty garden. It’s shady. Who was that guy who talked about the delicate shade plants? And what about this area that no one uses? It’s in one of my favorite sightlines from the terrace table into the forest, but maybe there should be something to draw people here. Not a table. Perhaps something for a ritual…
On birthday morning I went to have a look at the dread lawn. I found four kinds of grass and five groundcovers, including Cyclamen hederifolium which made beautiful flowers from July into December, and 3 more that are blooming now! The designers talk about “editing” a garden over time. I realize that to create the perennials garden, I can edit what is already there, replacing existing plants one by one, rather than starting from a blank slate.
What are these plants? How big will they get? Where is my note about what to plant next to the lavender? What do we want to say at the entrance? Will I be good at this? Andrea, who has a degree in these matters, asked questions: Where exactly are the views? Where are the existing lines? Will the paths be curvy or straight? I’m full of questions.
I surmised that what Patrick and I did was pray. My shame became an incantation.
I found my curiosity. What a birthday present!
On my morning walk I discovered a new secluded writing room, just waiting for a table and chair. And on the afternoon birthdayparty walk through the forest with our champagne flutes, Arnaud discovered what he thinks is an original “road” and hewn stones of a structure. He declared it an ancient temple.
