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Friday, February 5, 2010
Garden navel gazing
posted by Terry OShaughnessy at 0h33
Monet couldn't stop painting his gardens at Giverny. (Photo by Terry O'Shaughnessy)
Last week I asked myself why I liked to garden, and my answer was about as clear as mud. But maybe it's too hard to articulate. Maybe it’s more a case of actions speak louder than words.
After all, famous painter and water lily icon Claude Monet initially built his extensive gardens and pond simply in order to have something to paint when he left Paris and moved to the country. But it had such an effect on him, he ended up painting almost only his gardens for the rest of his life. Because for Monet, in that space there was always something new that he hadn't seen before, he said. I think there’s something in his observation that touches on why I garden.
When I began to garden, I created quite a few rather unlovely spaces. My early gardens were regimented places where flowers were lined up like soldiers. Sure, I could see that my awkward garden creation wasn’t at all the place I envisioned where climbing roses would be under planted with lavender, and great thickets of larkspur and lilies would form the backdrop to pockets of daisies. But I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.
And I don’t think I’m the only one who has ever experienced this problem.
I remember clearly when I was about 10 years old and our family moved from the city to a house in the West Island and my mother, who plants some of the most beautiful and lavish gardens that I’ve ever seen, planted her first garden – tomato plants and tall orange marigolds in a single line.
I guess that, as the years went on and with trial and error, both of us started getting the knack of things, and some beauty began to emerge here and there. But as any gardener knows, it’s the way a garden can almost garden itself and surprise you that is the amazing thing.
I’ll never forget the time I moved to a new house in the winter and that very summer an enormous bright pink, fragrant rose bush rambled all over the side of my house like a miracle. Or the June when a swathe of blue Love-in-a-Mist flowers emerged from the front of the garden where I had left a couple of plants go to seed the fall before. Or the way the garden just fills in as the summer goes on, and creates its own beautifully lavish corners when left to its own devices.
Like Monet, I have often felt that there is always something new in my garden. I would say every year there is something unexpected and certainly not planned by me, but that is nevertheless a thing of great beauty and interest. And I think that’s really why I garden.