An interest in gardens came to me young; childhood expeditions at my grandparents’, then watching my father work an abandoned farm and patch of first-growth stumps into his own magic place.
My husband and I have owned five homes in Vancouver and for each we made a garden. Two were renovations of old houses and their scabby yards; we were challenged with giant hollies and obscenely overgrown coniferous shrubs, all planted in the wrong spots and full of black branches and spiders. The other three were homes we built, and had the joy and stresses of designing fresh new gardens.
Each of the five taught us and revealed secrets. We watched all of them for years, which was a luxury, because we saw what they wanted to do and how our mistakes and successes could grow. I have never missed a house after moving from it, but I have missed the gardens, and had many sneaky plans about going back to them in the dark and digging out my favourite bits.
On long rainy days or early summer mornings, sitting in a window, I learned how the garden is integral to sense of home, from the journey through it to the entry, and from the interior; viewing, noticing, listening. And I knew viscerally and then learned through practice that the house and garden want to be close. The house wants to nestle and the garden wants to peep in the windows, display what it’s doing, what little wonders it has to show.
A nestled house is firmly planted and sits in contrast to the garden - a shepherd with dynamism brushing her legs. Seasons, weather; cold and warm, reaching green and settling browns, colour and bare branches, heavy, still shade and whipping chill. The house is stable and watching, the garden fleet and whimsy. Home and its comforts - warmth, shelter, enclosure, are amplified; the garden is earth and the wild.
The house wants places to show you the garden; places to linger. Entrances became important to us and steps leading up to the front door evolved, with deeper treads and shallower risers. They became wide – places to sit with tea on a sunny morning or to rest on during bouts of weeding or bulb planting. We realized how perfunctory most steps are – just a means to get to the door - sharp and abrupt and transient. Ours were lingering and contemplative and comfortable - they became a place.
I cherish little changes - buds forming and honey bees and fresh tips emerging from the soil, and realized that when inside and wanting to enjoy these tiny pleasures I needed to be close, or the plants needed to be close to me. Recklessly we placed a lacy Amelanchier in our front garden so that within a few seasons the branch tips would touch the window, and tiny, almost daily gifts are received. Before the blossoms the petals show between arching sepals. Chickadees hunt for tiny insects, cast hurried sidelong glances, fearing the big eyes through the glass. Sunny days in spring and autumn the low sun casts shadows of branches and leaves; shifting in breeze the patterns move like silent childhood films. Our front window, a low, deep silled casement, became a place. With a rumpled sofa and warm throw we sit with the cats, mesmerized and attentive, watching all the visitors as they hop and and peck and drone.
The garden is a source and reminder of life and invites us to take pleasure. Cuttings and blooms, herbs and vegetables are harvest, and delighting in their scent and taste and presence brings the garden inside, unifying the out with in. Warming by a fire after chill raking or smelling beets as they roast; scouring soil from under fingernails and knocking mud from boots are rituals and acts of service to our patches and balms for our busy progress.