A recent Grow Write Guild writing prompt asked you to write about loss, attachment, and letting go. The idea for the prompt came to me as a result of the volume of beloved plants that I lost this spring due to a particularly harsh winter. However, I suspect that there were other losses in the back of my mind that had a hand in its making.
Last week, I saw my friend Barry Parker’s garden for the last time. I should qualify that point by saying that what I saw for the last time was the garden that I have come to know as Barry Parker’s garden. Barry has sold his house of 27 odd years and moved out of Toronto. He will have a new garden in the new place, so in effect, that garden is now Barry Parker’s garden and the one that I think of as his garden belongs to someone else.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. We all know where a garden begins, but where does it end?
Barry had a sale a few weeks back. For about an hour his garden was filled to capacity with avid gardeners eager to take home a keepsake of this special place and to say goodbye to the man who created it. Many of the visitors asked if the new owners were gardeners and whether they’d be maintaining it. I can understand the question. Those of us who have seen Barry’s garden know that it is special. We don’t want this living work of art to just disappear. We want the new owners to understand its significance. We want them to take on a conservatorship role and preserve it. We want to ease the pain of this loss by knowing it is still there, even if we can’t visit it anymore.
But what would they be preserving exactly? Gardens are always in transition and in a state of constant change. The garden as I saw it on that last day is not the same garden that I saw for the first time exactly five years prior. Sure, the bones are mostly the same. The two large beech pyramids that welcome you into the back woodland portion were still standing stoic as ever. My eye caught the redbud in bloom (I tasted a flower for old time’s sake). The cutleaf elderberry that I had harvested flowers and fruit from over the years was just beginning to leaf out. Even little things like the Jack-in-the-pulpit that had captivated me on that first day five years ago was in bloom again, looking exactly as it had then.
Yet much of the garden was not the same. Barry was always making changes in the space. Plants died and new plants went in in their place. Sometimes he’d become bored or unsatisfied with a section and change it. Some new thing would catch his fancy and he’d find a place to put it. Gardens may be works of art, but they are not static. They live, evolve, grow, die, contract, expand, and breathe. When we preserve a gardener’s garden, I wonder exactly which garden we are preserving? Do we just decide that the last incarnation is The Garden and then work to preserve it as-is, replacing dead or poorly performing plants with the same things over and over, forever?
I think about my own garden — now in its forth spring, and how much it has changed in the passing years. In my mind it is in a constant state of flux. I tell visitors, “It’s not done yet! Come back next week, next month, next season. It will be better then.” But it is never done. It will never be done. It will always be better. Every day is exactly the last time it will ever be like it is now. Tomorrow it will be something else. It is this transitory nature of gardens that we love and loath at the same time. For years I told myself that I couldn’t do certain things in my various gardens because I didn’t own the land and the gardens were too impermanent and insecure. Eventually, I threw caution to the wind when I realized that this is always the case. Whether we own land or not, our time with it is fleeting; temporary. Change, loss, and uncertainty are all inevitable parts of life… and gardening.
Exactly seven days ago was the last time I saw the garden that I came to know of as Barry’s garden. That garden is finished now. It belongs to someone else to make their own. They may never appreciate it for what it was. They may pull it all out and put in an Astroturf play area and Kiddie pool for all I know. I may not like it, but that’s their prerogative.
Soon I will visit Barry in his new home and his new garden. I look forward to seeing what he will do in this very different space. What will he make with a new set of perimeters to work with? I feel sad and sentimental about the loss of the last garden. I suspect I will often think on it and wonder what it is “doing.” But then I remember that I can just call Barry and ask him what he is doing and what is happening in his new garden. This garden felt like a friend, but without him in it, it is more-or-less just a really nice space. Barry’s garden is where Barry is engaged in the act of gardening. And that’s all that really matters: The Gardener. My friend.
What a beautiful post. I attended Barry’s sale as I often saw pictures of his lovely and intriguing garden online. His garden is a very special place filled with love and the care that he took. I bought a concrete architectural piece(and some plants) at his sale that will have a special place in my garden.
This was a great post, Gayla. It really resonated emotionally with me. I’ve only been a homeowner for a year now, but previously I rented – for 20 years – at too many addresses that I have to write them down to count – and the number of gardens that have come and gone in those years would be quite the spectacle if they were all joined together! Sometimes I happen to drive by an old address, only to see all of my work vanished without a trace. It can make me sad, sometimes. But those gardens always live on in my mind, exactly as they were. Each time I left one behind, I would hope that the next person would carry on.
Now, I own my own home. My current garden is only in it’s second year. And it does change every day. I can’t wait to see what it will be tomorrow, or even, what it will be when I get home from work today, especially in this time of year where changes come by the hour.
This is so lovely, Gayla. I know that feeling of wanting to preserve what was special and unique, what had been grown and tended with care. We don’t want these places to fade away, or die from neglect.
Perhaps I have a slightly different perspective, as I am now bringing back an old garden long neglected and I feel like the garden has a life of its own. I am sure the original gardener (long since passed away) would be horrified that what was once a huge and pristine lawn has become wild grasses, but we like our meadow and fruit trees. At the same time, I have been lured into dahlia growing, thanks to bulbs he left behind that survived a decade of neglect. It makes me realize that even as gardens change each year, they also have eras and change over time and with their tenders, as we too are changed by our gardens.
I suppose the thing we really hope is that someone comes along who cares for them.
Thanks for ending Friday on a lovely note. I will be thinking about this.
Lovely post. I admit to driving by my old house one day and being upset by the way they let it “go to seed” but then I stopped and thought about the great space I have now.
We sold our house in the city many years ago, and I left behind my herbs and flowers that I had grown over a ten year period. I was excited to move, but sad to leave the plants. Later I found out I could have specified that I wanted to take them with me, but it was too late. A few months later we stopped by to pick up mail the new owner had for us, and found out she fostered dogs for a shelter. She’d dug up and threw away the herbs because they looked like “weeds” and might be poison ivy. To say I was horrified is an understatement. Sigh. I’m so glad I took pictures of my beds over the years– I still love looking at them:)
Leaving one’s garden behind is like leaving one’s job: no one will ever do it the way you did. But that’s just as well. Would you ever want to think you were entirely replaceable? A little nostalgia, then forward ho!