I.
My friend Laurie is traveling with three other garden
lovers, James and John, and a cousin, to visit England’s best. Perhaps you are as
envious as I to hear that they are staying a few days at Sissinghurst.
These are her idyllic photographs.
I’d urged her not to miss Lamb House while in the vicinity and lent her Joan Aiken’s book, The Haunting of Lamb House. Given me nearly 30 years ago by a dear friend, who inscribed the inside (as booklovers do with friends), it’s one I sometimes pull to read again, still intrigued by the story of its three sequential inhabitants (one of them Henry James) and their ghostly connections.
II.
All three of those lucky travelers are creative gardeners
themselves…which got me to thinking about the Chapel Hill Garden tour my
neighbor Kim took me on ten days ago.
Each of the places we saw couldn’t have been more different. Luckily, we began at the one farthest out of
town, one belonging to a young couple named King. If theirs had been the only one on tour, we’d
have been happy.
On what I think may be only half an acre, and in only 13 years, the two (he told us that she designs and he digs) have created pockets of beauty at every turn, from the flowery spring of the front gardens, to the meditative areas of the side, and the surprisingly charming back, where they have made a dry creek bed with stones and subtly placed lengths of dark wood fallen from trees.
Other gardens on the tour had interesting points to admire,
but nothing inspired me like this first one.
I mean inspire…as in breathing in.
To wit: every single day
since that visit, I have been out in the yard trying to revive something of my growing
spaces, too. I don’t have their neatly
laid out corner lot (my lot-lines would rival a demonic maze). And I will never be a gardener like these
more dedicated ones. I love gardens, are
inspired by their beauty, but though I try, soils I trod on do not seem to
respect my efforts or wishes. When I
find something that will flower, deer, rabbits, and other groundlings make
meals of them.
Nonetheless, post-Garden Tour, out I headed, taking with me
the chief thing I learned from the Kings:
one plot at a time.
Something else was pushing me forward, for which I cannot
account. Along with their inspiration,
came an unusual amount of energy. Really,
it was as if someone had infected me with a lot of Vitamin B.
Early each morning, I began (one plot at a time) to search
out potential in the mess of an area, and dig into it. Three or four hours would go by while I
pulled weeds and ivy, dug up and carried stones for borders and extended paths…making
design, of sorts, the way I make art with whatever comes to me.
I acquired 5 large slabs to use as stepping stones…at
290 lbs…but realized once I got them home that their weight didn’t allow me to
get more than two out of the car. Steve
Winkler, our intrepid, kind, and patient landscape gardener, stopped by and put
them in place. “I couldn’t let you ride
around with them in your car forever,” he said.
Here and there, I added pieces of interest (i.e., interest
to me)…things from dug-up ground, streets walked, thrift stores, and nice people
who indulge my eccentricities…an old wire chair, repainted baskets and pots
planted with something brighter (and deer proof).
Kim arrived one afternoon with a tall purple fixture from
her shed, and said, “It needs a bright color.”
We set it to center that little plot, and I painted it sky blue. Ah. Henry Mitchell would finally nod his
approval at something I did in the garden.
(It also, by the way, marks with dignity a little pet burial ground
Alexander had begun back there.)
In my memory garden, I found larger stones that
wouldn’t disappear in mud and weeds. Alexander
dug out the circles and helped me place the black ones carefully.
Then, ever thinking, he began work on a miniature bike-race
track behind one of the benches…a two-day project of his own. I consider that
part of a garden, too.
I gave him the task of painting two birdhouses to post on
the back fence, joining the other three made by my neighbor Dail. When I turned
the larger one over, there was Alexander’s 4 year old "signature”…his holiday
gift to me in 2017.
III.
One day when my knees refused to bend to yet another stone,
I attacked the shed, hanging tools on real hooks and finding, once they were
off the floor, a few more hiding (how we
accumulated three metal rakes of various ages, I don’t know). Sport toys, bags of garden nutrients, etc,
car-wash tools, out-of-season door wreaths, and camp chairs had their
comeuppance. I hope it stays that way for a while.
IV.
When one morning I wandered out into the back treed lot I
intend to keep ungardened and unhoused, I finally noticed its young maple
forest hiding in the tangles of thick thorny Elaeagnus…known in our
neighborhood as “ugliagnus” for its aggressive, weather-resistant, critter-resistant,
disease-resistant, even clipper-resistant invasions. Back to the shed I went, trying out one
implement after the other until I found one sharp enough to cut down the trunks
of those trespassers.
For two days, I cut, untangled, yanked, pulled and piled,
until the spindly maples lifted their grateful arms to the sky.
V.
Rain here in our town falls only 10 drops at a time every
other week, giving illustration to that precious line of old English poetry, …the
small rain down will rain… I save
dishwater to use on the herbs and pots.
But last night I heard the roof tingle, and this morning the top layer
of ground, at least, was wet with a whole quarter-inch of it. Indeed, this afternoon as I write this, it’s been
falling steadily, if lightly, keeping me out of the garden (but not stopping me
from thinking about it).
And yet, dry as we have been, spring has been the most
flowery we’ve seen in a long time. Thank
goodness for other people’s gardens, April-rich with fuchsia azaleas and purple
irises, white and pink dogwood. Another
strange gift of the season.
VI.
Soon enough, after our rainy respite today, the stone path
will be laid, and I’ll figure out my next little plot to renew.
I hope you are in the
garden, too, one way or another…even if we are not bedded down in Sissinghurst,
enjoying the elegant gardens of an old country.
