Rooted In Wisdom: Cultivating Ideas and Harvesting Lessons — Part 2 of 1,000
Personal insights and contemplations of The Fairly Quiet Gardener. Cultivating ideas and harvesting lessons from the books I love, gardeners that inspire me, my gardening journey, nature, and life in general.
Monty Don once wrote about dissolving into the “grooved movement and flowing, nameless green” of his garden. I wonder if the grooved movement that he wrote about would be his movements and well-worn routes through the garden and if the “grooved” part means repetition of those movements or routes or paths or activities through many, many seasons in his garden? And that his patterns of activities in the garden, the things he does for enjoyment and must do in tending his garden, have been done so many times that as he goes about doing them he “dissolves” into the garden itself without having to intentionally think about anything…it just happens and unfolds, surrounded and enveloped by his towering green plants and hedges. That is how I think of it anyway.
I am two seasons into the creation of our garden, Shortmeadow, and just entering the third. And all of my spare energy and time has been poured into taking a former pasture and shaping it into a densely planted garden oasis. A perimeter backdrop of tall evergreen hedging. An orchard, a woodland garden, hedged garden rooms filled with color, a more natural (some might say scruffy) hill planted with a variety of trees and shrubs, the list goes on. A place of (eventual) privacy where I too can “dissolve into grooved movement and flowing, nameless green.”
Subjectivity Should Rule in the Garden
In a personal garden, subjectivity or being influenced by personal feelings, tastes, and opinions must be of primary importance over purely practical objectivity. Or you risk missing the mark in creating a place that reflects you in its uniqueness. Even if it is heavily influenced by other gardens. This may be a silly point to make or an obvious statement. The key, perhaps, is to avoid doing anything in your garden, from its design to the plant selection, to simply conform with any notions of what someone else says should or shouldn’t be done.
That isn’t to say toss all gardening wisdom, books, television programs, gardening blogs (ahem), or YouTube videos out the window. Instead, the wisdom gleaned from such resources should serve as gentle guides, suggestions to be embraced only when they resonate with your personal vision. The most important thing is that your garden should feel like an extension of you. It should align with the emotional tone you wish to set, the atmosphere you want to breathe life into. The garden’s design should reflect what you want it to provide: beauty, refuge, serenity, joy, or a sense of connection to nature. And that can only happen if the choices made are deeply personal and aligned with your tastes, even if those choices may defy conventional wisdom here and there.
At times, it’s easy to fall into the trap of overthinking the practical elements of a garden. The need for structure, the rules of color coordination (which, suffering from a bit of “color confusion”, I basically ignore), etc. There is a fine line between curating a garden that is picturesque in the eyes of others and creating one that is meaningful to you, but they aren’t mutually exclusive.
The Gardening Journey - Every Season Brings New Opportunities and Surprises
As the journey of creating Shortmeadow continues, I have come to appreciate the organic and surprising ways that the garden has come together and evolved in even this short amount of time. Despite starting with a distinct plan/design that I have poured over again and again, reworking a bit here and a bit there, when I go out into the garden and start to put shovel to dirt I see changes that need to be made. I take quite a bit of time to observe and look at different angles. I look at how elements are working together and may shift plants or redesign a bed. I also react to things outside of the garden, like view corridors or a new home being built next door that is uncomfortably close to the fence line despite being on over an acre or another neighbor building a towering “shouse” (shop with living quarters) with a second story balcony that overlooks part of the garden. And I react by thinking about planting or structures that I can use to maintain privacy or views out to the mountain in the distance.
Every season brings new surprises. Sometimes, the plants that thrive aren’t the ones I expected, and the ones I painstakingly planted and tended might not flourish as hoped. There’s an ebb and flow to things. The garden isn’t a static space but a dynamic one that continually evolves, requiring ongoing interaction and adaptation. The creation of a garden is also a long-running relationship between you and the land. As you work with it, the land teaches you about its needs and limitations. You discover what it can offer and what it can’t. It’s an ongoing process of planning, doing, observing, learning, reflecting, and adapting.
Immersion into the Rhythm of the Garden
Over time, I notice the subtle ways in which this “grooved movement” manifests in my own gardening patterns. As the seasons unfold, many activities take on a rhythm—an ingrained flow, even though they may be laborious at times. And as I get past the initial several years of planting like crazy, building pergolas and sheds and raised bed boxes (and and and), trying to get everything in the ground so the garden can get on its way toward maturity, I anticipate that things will become less about sheer effort and more about immersion into the rhythm of the garden.
I cast my mind forward and I step into a future Shortmeadow. I wander through the garden’s pathways, stop under the rose covered arbors, pass the tall hedges that enclose private and peaceful garden rooms, sit on a bench in the woodland garden, and pluck an apple or pear from a tree in the orchard. Some plants, planted years before, are familiar friends; others, newly planted, are still finding their way.
