Gardens
A Personal View by Brian Marks
Before moving to our present home we lived for over twenty years in a large house, with a large, level garden, over twenty six yards square, adjoining fields which stretched into the distance. I came to love gardening. Not just the work involved, but the design and planning.
In the beginning, knowing very little in the way of horticulture, I soon came to regard that plot of land as a challenge. This would be no mere garden lawn, surrounded by flower borders, and the occasional decorative shrub. In the house I wrote, read, drew, and planned. Outside in the garden, I dug, I planted, and moved. Slowly, the planned garden began to take shape. I remember one particular fine, dry summer day when I worked in that garden from dawn to dusk. Not all heavy work. I spent many hours moving methodically, foot by foot, weeding. Not large weeds, but hundreds of small, almost microscopic weeds. Still merely heading into the daylight. But they would grow in size -- even the annual weeds -- and so they had to be 0removed. However thorough one was, weeding was always a continual "battle". Small, annual weeds, and much larger deep "tap-rooted" weeds.
I even dug a rock-edged pond. Placed in the correct place to add further decorative balance to the garden. With oxygen-producing water plants keeping the water clean and healthy for the multi-coloured cold water fish within it. Granted, there was one mishap -- more for the animal than the garden itself -- when our large Boxer dog ran onto the ice of the frozen pond. The ice broke, submerging the dog in icy water. But little actual damage was done. No more than broken ice -- and a cold, wet, badly shaken dog. The dog survived, and the pond refroze. Finis to that incident.
What is a garden without plants and colour? So now I planned its colourful, decorative contents. Hardy and half-hardy annuals, biennials, perennials, and, of course, my rose bed and borders. How much must I have spent, buying the timber and glass with which to build a large French coldframe. I relied more on ingenuity than money to make the rows of cloches. Literally thousands of seedlings were produced. But I remember one year I decided to grow from seed a few giant 12 foot tall sunflowers. The seeds germinated, and the sunflower plants began to grow. But not one grew taller than 12 inches! I never attempted to grow sunflowers again. I turned my efforts -- with far greater success -- to sweetpeas and runner beans.
One other failure: I never did completely remove white clover from my lawn. I achieved great satisfying success with the fruit and vegetable section of my garden -- divided from the much larger floral part of my garden as inconspicuously as possible, but not enough space to become a smallholder -- a financially successful smallholder!
On a warm, sunny summer day, my wife and I relaxed on a lawn, surrounded by colour -- and hopefully few weeds.
Other more wealthy people, with much more land, employ others to keep short the sweeping stretches of green. And to grow both the flowers and vegetables. But do they appreciate so much their tidy sweeping acres? Just a relatively small, private corner, which one has created and cultivated on one's own. This can truly be appreciated. Then it is possible to quote from the poem -- "One is nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on Earth." There are many types of garden. From the well-ordered tidy ones, to the old, old country gardens, which are often much more colourful and relaxing. Immense gooseberry bushes, apparently unpruned for years; colourful, seemingly everlasting flowering beds and border.
Here one can forget the gardening work, to find an almost hidden corner, where one can lie, relaxing in the sunshine, merely listening to the buzzing of the bees in the background. Now they are the workers, their buzzing merely providing a relaxing lullaby for you. Yes -- One is nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on Earth. And I write not just of the colour and summer sunshine, but of the winter too, when everywhere is so much more stark and cold.
Copyright The Bentilean, 1991, 1999
Brian Marks was a student at the Willfield Open Learning Centre, and lived in Blythe Bridge.Back to: The Contents Page | The Archive | The Bentilean Main Page