Rethinking my Gardens

In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but also with plants….

Intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world.… Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing.

— ROBIN WALL KEMMERER

A simple early Sunday morning ritual has me reading garden blog posts even before I get out of bed. Today I was checking out Margaret Roach’s A Way to Garden. Margaret’s blog has been my go-to garden blog for awhile now. I learn something new each time I read, but I also like stepping into the story of her garden, her life and her friends. Today she was connecting back to another gardener — Tovah Martin and her most recent book A Garden in Every Sense and Season (April 2018).

Their podcast and Tovah’s book sent me off on an amazing journey of thinking about my garden, my gardening habits and who I am as a gardener. I started reading Tovah’s book in April and promptly lost track of  it when starting my spring garden chores and shoveling the never-ending April snow storms. When I looked at it again I realized Tovah was talking about using your senses when in the garden. She was linking me to the sights, sounds and smells that come with each of the seasons when I’m out in the garden.

Really, she and Margaret were talking about observation. They both were looking at their gardens as an artist — not just a person who plants. They were discussing colors, textures, sounds that we hear through out the year when stepping into the garden — the smell of soil when moist, the sound of insects during the late summer or the crunch of leaves as we walk into the fall season. Each season has its own set of sounds, colors, smells and feelings.

If we take time to see, we also put words to those senses — words to name the plants and words to name the time of year. Their words led me to thinking of Robin Wall Kemmerer and her words in Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses:

Having words for these forms makes the differences between them so much more obvious. With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see….

Having words also creates an intimacy with the plant that speaks of careful observation.

All of their words sent me spinning. Returning to their books helps me realize I have been plodding along this summer doing the tasks that gardeners do. I was keeping up with the chores, taking a few pictures here and there. But I had lost the joy of looking carefully, the joy of taking in the details of the natural world. I was — and have been for several years — doing the garden but not living in the garden as a artist. I had lost the intimacy that the garden gives us with nature.

I have been creating within the structure of a “regular” garden. I have been following the garden plan that you see all around the city — certain flowers are always in the garden, certain veggies are placed in a set way, the pots by the front door, the chores done each month. It looks very nice and is very predictable. I have enjoyed it all but…I lost my relationships with this land and these plants.

This summer I started to think about redesigning the back gardens and got stuck. I have not been able to make decisions. I could not see the plans or where things should go or how to change anything. I could not make the connections. I was sitting with an old pattern and very few words. I was stuck with no real attachment to this process. I had lost the sense of art and creativity.

Interesting how a few words from someone can set you on a new path. It was like the sunlight popping through my window saying here is what you forgot to do!

So for this week I am stepping back, rereading Kemmerer’s books, and really reading Martin’s book — two very different books by the way: one more poetic as she steps into her garden and one getting to poetry through the science of the natural world but both giving me what I need.

I am taking time to look, hear and be in the garden. I am going to make a list — naming the plants, the sights and sounds for each of the seasons in my garden — and from there I hope to find my way into redesigning the garden.

Redesigning a space that will bring in more birds, use more native plants, and create a more sustainable landscape with all the sights and sounds of the full year.

Looking to find my artist’s eye!