Down the garden path

I am a city girl. For 6 years in Cambridge, my “garden” was a trio of windowboxes which grew in the deep shade. Struggling herbs, trailing lamium, colourful begonias and impatiens. For five more years in DC, my garden was a plot, steeply sloping toward the house, 20 feet by 40 feet. When we bought that house, there was a parking pad on a third of the lawn and a deck over the other two thirds. We ripped out the deck, jack-hammered up the pad, and had a postage stamp of grass under the enormous maple tree for the children and the puppy to play on. When we first came to New Zealand and lived on Ocean Road, my garden was a stunning mixture of tropical plants and perennials and succulents—but I never touched it. The combination of the foreignness of the plants and the root shock of my own transplant kept me looking at the garden but not engaging with it at all.

And then there is the garden here. Eighteen months ago, after we moved into this house, I went down to the wild and beautiful garden, and I wept. I would never, ever be able to handle the size and scope of this mysterious thing. I couldn’t even tell which of the overgrown green bits were weeds, which green bits were for keeping. Then Keith came over and when I asked about which plants I should plant where, he talked about changing the slope of the terraces. Changing the slope? I wasn’t even sure how to handle the slope I had. Changing the slope seemed impossible to me. I wept again. I would never ever figure this thing out and we were totally out of money to pay people to figure it out for us. My garden was destined to be a disaster, and I hated that.

I got my head around the first slope change and Michael and I spent days digging and wheelbarrowing and moving dirt, well, sand really. But the thing which had been slightly clear in my head became clearer, and I began to build up some levels and take out others. We have endlessly been moving dirt and sand, bringing in compost, building up some levels and taking off other levels. And bits of it take shape.

I have never understood why it was people loved to garden so much. My tiny spaces, which required almost no effort on my part, were just right. A large garden seemed time consuming and unpleasant, dirty and tiring. I figured a city girl like me wasn’t much meant for making gardens work. Except it turns out it is a joy to build new walls and move plants and cut down trees. Who knew this was for me? I’m an adult develomentalist. I do leadership development and organisational change. I’m used to slight shifts in sensemaking over long periods of time which I measure with careful and sensitive metrics because the shifts will be so small.

But in my garden three or four people can transform a path or move a tree or plant all the veggies in just a couple of hours. In an afternoon, I can build stone walls which change the way everything looks. I can move enough dirt to change the slope of a hill and then, if I don’t like it, I can move it back. Mistakes are fixable, seeds bear fruit, and when things die, you just go and get something else to put in its place.

In my regular work, I have worked for years to get competent, to think many steps ahead, to be able to picture what 200 people might find most interesting to talk about four hours into the conference. In my garden, I am blissfully, beautifully, delightedly incompetent. I can hardly think through the single step I’m on, much less the thing I might do next. I move piles of dirt from this place into another and then decide it was better where it was. I plant trees too close together and then have to dig them up and start again. I uproot the good flowers and tend the weeds. During the week, it is all about my brain and my words—can I think my way around this issue, communicate well about that plan, write carefully about this idea. On the weekend, it is my body and my eyes. Can I lift that piece of concrete over there to stack for a wall, can I feel the slope of the path under my fingers, can I get the plants far enough apart to be healthy, close enough together to be lovely.

Last weekend I woke up at 6am, butterflies in my stomach, thrilled about moving a hill and adding a path. I gardened until I was sore and filthy and could almost not move. On Monday I hobbled to work and left the garden alone. This weekend, I was at it again in the rain and the sun, the wind and the birdsong. Now the path curves down the way I like it, the tree ferns glow in dappled sun, and I feel like a sculptor of the land and the greens. I do not understand my love of this garden, and I feel delighted with my not understanding. I move my fingers along, half a step at a time, and feel my way into a greener future.

pictures today:
Michael hanging laundry about a year ago, pre-garden work; post deck/pre lawn; today, new path; Julie and Julia and their grand accomplishment--the major hydrangea removal; the path where the hydrangea used to be; the veggie patch as of today