I am rereading The Morville Hours, a marvelous book, published in 2010 by English garden writer, Katherine Swift. The author, a scholar/gardener and former librarian at Trinity College, Dublin, describes the twenty-year process of creating an amazing garden on a National Trust property in Shropshire. The book juxtaposes the details of garden making with the complex history of the property and surrounding area, all woven into a many-colored tapestry that is also threaded with the author’s biography.
Midway through the book, I found myself engrossed in Dr. Swift’s description of major interruptions in her gardening brought on by the onset of a serious illness. Recovery from the illness, which is never named, took months during high gardening season and resulted in the garden reverting—at least partly—to wildness. The illness, which began about four years into the making of the Morville landscape, reoccurred periodically thereafter, as did the consequent neglect of large and small garden chores. Dr. Swift sums up by saying, “this became the pattern of my gardening.”
My pattern has undergone a similar change.
Grief is not an illness, but it produces a similar, altered state of being. My husband, Dave, died in February–not a month when much is going on in the garden. Still, in the weeks after his death, I would look out at the bones of the garden, unable to imagine how spring could come without him. Spring cooperated for awhile, with cool weather persisting and slowing the growth of the earliest flowers. The snowdrops were late and when the daffodils finally did arrive, they remained in flower about three times longer than normal. Eventually real spring came and with it the spurt of growth that all living things undergo in that season. The flowering quince covered itself with blossoms, as did the abelias. ‘Elizabeth’, the yellow-flowered magnolia tree, looked stunning in early evening when it was backlit by the sun. My Carolina silverbell—Halesia carolinia—sprouted a bumper crop of pendant “bells”.
Dispirited and overwhelmed with other chores, I didn’t get much garden work done. The weeds, which take no prisoners and give grief no quarter, responded by growing to impressive dimensions. When I did get out in the garden, I couldn’t seem to accomplish anything. My mind drifted and my usual resolve faltered. I stood around a lot. In fact, I am fairly sure that there were a few times when the neighbor’s rampaging honeysuckle mistook my stationary form for some kind of lumpy-looking plant support and reached out towards me in an attempt to clamber up my leg.
But time passes, no matter how you feel. My state of being is no less altered, but I am a bit more accustomed to it. My wandering mind can now at least circle an idea for more than a few minutes and I have found myself able to work purposefully in the garden again. Now I am in the process of taking the various beds and borders back from the plants that, like indulged children, have gotten their own way for just a bit too long.
The ‘Gloire de Dijon’ rose is a perfect example. It is an old-fashioned once-blooming rambler that puts out scores of yellow-gold, scented flowers every year. Untrimmed last fall and immediately after flowering this spring, it extended its long, thorny stems in every direction, like a green, terrestrial octopus. I worked for over an hour just to get it back to a reasonable size and, as I dabbed ointment on my various scratches, I resolved to finally buy it the arch that will curb its wandering ways.
Lawn grass has crept into planting areas, becoming exponentially lusher than the actual lawn. English ivy, a thug of epic proportions, is threatening to envelope both house and garden. And I won’t even begin to describe the sorry state of the privet hedge and the rambunctious self-sown maple crop sprouting at its feet. Time, patience and power tools will solve my problems—at least the gardening ones—but there are moments when the prospect is daunting.
But then I return to Katherine Swift, who does not dwell on weedy growth, but turns to the serendipitous things that plants do when left to their own devices. She savored the lovely ornamental qualities of the various plants in her vegetable garden, gloried in self-sown annuals and biennials like poppies and foxgloves and marveled at the unlikely, but successful ways that those self-sown species combined with stalwarts like roses and fruit trees.
When I think about it, the same thing is true in my own, less magnificent garden. The lavender, with no help from me, has grown to record heights and the peonies were especially lovely. If I manage to trick the birds, I will harvest a bumper crop of blueberries from my little bush. Self-sown mallows, with their delicate white flowers, have found their own ideal spots and I have not grubbed out a single one.
Eventually I will tame the overgrowth and extricate the house and garden from excess ivy, but in the meantime, I am heartened by Katherine Swift’s last words on life changes and gardening lapses—“I had learned to stop worrying and trust my garden.”