A Garden Sanctuary
As the garden dims into winter dormancy something inside me shuts down. I’m working too hard and I’ve lost my ability to laugh. Everything feels numb, neural pathways blocked. I look out of the window onto seed heads soggy with rain, the flowerbeds too saturated to work on. I take kitchen scraps out to the compost heap, leaving footprints in the damp grass. I try to breath the garden in, make some connection, but all I can smell is decay. I go into the greenhouse to check on the seedlings I sowed in September, but even they seem to be asleep. I wade through the mud of December, get through Christmas with a forced grin, and emerge in January blinking in surprise at the first sunny day for weeks. At last I motivate myself to get out into the garden and tidy up the borders, working methodically for a whole day, weeding and cutting back. My mind drifts to other places, and I realise that the negative thoughts have dwindled, pushed away by the simple act of gardening. I stop for a minute, turning my face up to the January sun and feel its healing power, acknowledging the good that has come out of the day.
We go on a family holiday just as the world is waking up to the horrors of COVID19, and come back to a completely different world. We face isolation from friends and extended families, we are anxious about the health of our loved ones, about jobs and income, about the state of the world economy. Thousands of people are dying and it is all so damn sad. I weep, listening to a Coldplay song called Everyday Lives. It seems unbearably poignant. But then something starts shifting inside. I’m at home 24/7. The sun comes out as if someone is throwing us a lifeline, and it entices me outside. I cut all the grasses and perennials back and everything looks so bare but it doesn’t matter; I see new green shoots appearing underneath and my heart beats quicker. I weed the entire garden, slowly and methodically, as if I have all the time in the world. While I do this, it dawns on me that I spend most of my life chasing my tail, I’m rushing even when I don’t need to be rushing. This self-imposed stress can’t be good for me.
While NHS staff work valiantly to save lives, I sow seeds, far too many of them, and feel pleased at the sight of all those seed trays lined up neatly in the greenhouse. I check them incessantly and then – yes! – the first signs of life are there. The tiniest green shoots appear and something that feels like joy starts to bubble up inside me. I nurture these seedlings like they are my own babies, glad of the focus to take me away from the bleakness of the outside world. At one point, amazingly, I seem to have finished everything that needs doing in the garden and I lie down beneath the willow tree, glad of the dappled shade in the hot April sun. I close my eyes and listen to the birdsong and try to remember the last time I actually sat down and did nothing in my garden. I doze. When I open my eyes I’m looking up through filigree branches to the sparkling blue sky above. There is no air traffic. I can hear no cars in the lane. The air I breathe feels clean. Can this be a better world, I ask myself?
I look at what I have created in this garden and feel my heart opening up. My head is fizzing with possibilities as I plan a new border, ordering plants from nurseries that I know need as much help as possible in this crisis. The tulips bloom, flowering all at once in a frenzy of colour, set off by clouds of euphorbia and honesty. Geraniums and sedums knit themselves into perfectly formed hummocks, while foxgloves and verbascums shoot upwards towards the sun. The garden cannot be held back. It has such a strong life-force, a transformative alchemy that can nourish and heal if you choose to engage with it.
My narrowed world brings joy from simple things. I meet an 83-year-old neighbour for the first time who shows me round his garden – at a distance – and I am bowled over by his plant-filled paradise. ‘I’m obsessed with growing plants,’ he says happily. He looks about 53, a wonderful advert for a life of gardening. I take him a dahlia and his eyes light up. I put spare plants out on my wall for people to help themselves to, a silent message sent with them: enjoy these flowers, connect with your gardens, feel the restorative power of plants. As the tulips fade, new jewels are jostling in the wings waiting for their turn to shine. The peony buds are forming, geums bring paint-splash colour and after a day or two of welcome rain, other plants that have been slower to come to life stretch out luxuriously in collages of fresh, shimmering green. Every day I see something different emerging. I don’t want to miss a thing. I think back to my wrung-out, wintry alter-ego, and I can’t believe I’m the same person. I give silent thanks to my garden, my sanctuary, and all that I can learn from it in these troubled times. The garden is talking to me, and I am listening.
