Slow down
I’ve had much time to think about what it is, exactly, that I want from a garden of my own. Many years, in fact, protracted as they were by a global pandemic and its consequent supply chain impacts on almost everything, but particularly construction (which ultimately lead me to Townsville). What is wanted is certainly more than the inevitable excitement that comes with creating and maintaining something new — in this case, a garden in a largely unfamiliar climate. That’s all well and good, and there’s a certain novelty about it, but like all novelty it will ware quickly. Novelty is something marketing departments the world over use to their shareholders’ advantage by advertising only marginally different versions of their latest widget. For many years nothing much has substantially differentiated new iPhone models, for example, from those they immediately supersede. Yet so many of us feel we must have the latest.
Our appetite for novelty is seemingly insatiable, even for the same class of desired object. Anything will do, from superhero movies and Nike Air Jordans, to music by Taylor Swift, Japanese netsuke, and varieties of dahlia (or desert-rose, for that matter). There can be a certain sense of satisfaction, and sometimes status associated with having either the latest of anything, the best of something, or simply something not previously owned. And I’m certainly not immune. In one way or another, marketing sucks us all into the vortex of novelty. And marketing also heightens our envy. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’s’ is irresistible, even pathological for some, while for others (those with the means to ‘manufacture’ inadequacy and want) it proves lucrative.
What I want from my garden has little, if anything, to do with novelty or keeping up with the Jones’s. It is perhaps the antithesis of both. As my garden grows and takes form, it will of course be new to me, and so one can argue that it will be novel in that sense. But it will be my increasing familiarity with the garden as it grows, matures, and becomes established that engages me more than its newness. And once familiarity has firmly taken root, I can then look forward to a deeper kind of engagement. An intimacy. I know that sounds odd, but so be it. To my way of thinking, there must be some sense of permanency about a garden for anyone to form an intimate attachment with it. Of course, permanency is an illusion because change is constant. I am under no illusion that — like almost every other garden — mine will not outlast its creator. And that’s OK because what I seek is only a sense of permanency, and only on a time scale of one human life: what’s left of mine.
I’ve previously mentioned the unchanging nature of my grandparent’s modest garden. That was certainly the case with the way it had been laid out. I figure that to achieve any sense of permanency with my garden, it too will be primarily through its design. If any garden succeeds in achieving its purpose, then the only reason for changing the design of an established garden would be for it to fulfil a different purpose, however fickle, practical, or profound that might be. If, like me, one seeks (and presumably achieves) an intimate attachment with their garden, a change in its design would defeat its purpose. So taking time to get the design ‘right’ is important. Of course there must be room for some degree of adaptation or tinkering if and when necessary — widening a path, for example, to accomodate wheel-chair access (though just as with building design, that can and should be anticipated during drafting). And although the design of a garden is for me the foundation for a sense of permanence, within the garden change will nonetheless have its way. In countless ways.
The most immediate example of change that springs to my mind is linear; plant growth, maturity, and decay. The next is cyclical; diurnal and seasonal change. Australia is a large country — much larger than most Australians (especially city-dwellers) imagine. The notion of four seasons seems rather quaint for the world’s only nation-continent. Indeed, in many of the country’s less populated northern regions, seasons are conceptualised differently than the four meteorological seasons most Australians are familiar with.
In the northwest of my home state, for example, Aṉangu people recognise five seasons, while the Yolŋu from north eastern Arnhem Land experience six. A few hundred kilometres to the west, people living in the city of Darwin, like Townsville and elsewhere in the north of Australia, mostly speak of two seasons, ‘the wet’ and ‘the dry’, and sometimes three if they include the build-up to the annual monsoonal season, known in the vernacular as ‘mango madness’. The rising humidity and temperatures late in the calendar year coincide with the annual ripening of mangoes, and, in some people, increased levels of stress, anxiety, insomnia, depression, anger, and hostility. It’s another kind of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), quite unrelated to the lack of sunlight mostly associated with SAD in higher latitudes.
Over much shorter timescales than seasons, innumerable subtle — and at other times, vivid — changes occur by virtue of the sun traversing the sky as the Earth spins on its axis every twenty-four hours (give or take thirty seconds). Light intensity and colour-temperatures gradually shift; shadows move, intensify and fade; and the hues of whatever the light touches alter throughout the day. Where sparse clouds pass quickly overhead, their tooing and froing can dramatically alter a garden’s appearance, sometimes minute-by-minute. Wind adds another dimension of movement, of course, animating what might otherwise be a photographic stillness. It can also introduce sound into one’s garden with the rustling of leaves as they flap against each other in the breeze. So many of us take such changes for granted that our minds barely register them.
Midori Shintani, from the Tokashi Millennium Forest, talks of the “tiny, delicate changes in sky, wind, light, and every element of nature [that] occur around us through the year.” Precisely. And what’s more, Ms Shintani notes that seventy-two seasons are traditionally recognised in Japan. I’ve no idea if the following seasons are correctly named, but they’re particularly descriptive; from ‘first peach blossoms’ to ‘peonies bloom’, and ‘east wind melts ice’ to ‘praying mantises hatch’. Though I’ve never experienced the season of ‘thick fog descends’ while travelling through Japan, it is one of my favourites based purely on what I associate with it. A couple of winters ago while living in Tasmania, an entire week passed by where the house I was minding — perched on the edge of the Derwent Valley — was enveloped in thick soupy fog. Until then I’d never experienced anything like it. Having spent so much of my life in the warm and mostly dry Mediterranean climate of Adelaide, I’d only ever thought of fog as somewhat unpredictable, temporary, and rather extraordinary. I’d never really considered it as truly seasonal. With seventy two seasons, there is, on average, a new season every five days or so in Japan. Imagine being attuned to so many natural cycles?
The soft cloud-filtered sunlight that touches wet foliage, flowers, boughs, trunks, and rocks immediately after rain (which can bring some aural pleasure of its own to a garden as it falls with varying strength), intensifies and saturates their colours. This was the luminosity treasured by the late Latvian-Australian photographer, Peter Dombrovskis, who captured it in the vast and oftentimes austere Tasmanian wilderness landscapes he so expertly recorded with his Linhof film camera. He not only had developed the skills to artfully record a scene few would ever observe first-hand, but also the heart to share it in the best way he knew how. Most people associate his images solely with the Tasmanian wilderness, but from time-to-time he also photographed individual trees, gardens, and parkland.
In my home town of Adelaide, the sun sets over the sea, and is reflected in the mostly untroubled surface of the Gulf St Vincent. Sometimes, with the right atmosphere, an intense pink light reflects downward from low clouds and washes the city in a warm pink glow. Seeing this as a teenager — and even later into my twenties — I’d sometimes scramble to the rooftop ridge of my parent’s galvanised corrugated steel garage to gain a broader view of our garden and beyond, and to immerse myself in pink — if just for some fleeting minutes.
On a crystal-clear night, the lustrous light of a full or near-full moon can reveal a very different monochromatic beauty about gardens. Rarely appreciated for their nocturnal transformation, gardens are mostly ignored after the sun sets. If anything, where the weather permits they serve as mere stages for the theatre of socialising, and are spoiled by mostly harsh and unnecessary artificial lighting. But take a long look at a garden illuminated only by moonlight and there are treasures to be found, not the least of which are countless tones of deep indigo. This is, unfortunately, becoming a rarity, since fewer humans live far from artificial light sources. But as those who have experienced it can attest, there is no true blackness while a full moon is shining. And under a bright moon on a cloudless night, one might also catch a glimpse or two of some nocturnal wildlife — something I only grew to fully appreciate while living in an East Melbourne apartment block in my thirties. There, one evening, I happened upon a Tawny Frogmouth perched at one of the corners of a somewhat clunky Hills Hoist. It sat motionless, staring directly at me with its big bright eyes as I collected washed clothes from the shared laundry.
In a garden, or elsewhere outdoors for that matter, there’s oodles of change to be observed, appreciated, and delight in should one slow down and remain still enough to open one’s senses to it. More often than not, however, we limit the appreciation of whatever can been seen to our first glance of it. Many of us are inured to the immediate familiarity of recognisable forms — tree, rock, flower, path, hedge, and the like — and only permit ourselves (unconsciously) to believe that they’re all we’re seeing, and therefore all that’s worth seeing. All too often we miss the sometimes beautiful detail and subtleties about otherwise everyday forms.
Part of the reason for me wanting to create a forest garden in my backyard that is mostly devoid of anything as showy as what I’ve planned for the front garden, is to instil in me a greater appreciation of subtle changes. In the forest garden, I don’t want to be surrounded by anything visually ‘stunning’, or spectacular. Why would I want to be stunned? As elsewhere in my life, I don’t much feel a need to extract continuous excitement from a garden. Who wants to be more-or-less constantly bombarded with visual intensenesses? There’s plenty to appreciate in the simplest of gardens courtesy of the planet spinning on its axis along its slow and predictable cosmic path around the Sun.
It is quite possible and often easy to find beauty, delight, joy, and occasional surprise in amongst the ordinary. Every so often while engaged in that labour of love that is gardening, I remind myself to stop, still my body, and silence my mind long enough to let some of the detail around me unfold and reveal itself. For me, there’s a great deal of joy to be had in the making and maintaining of a garden, but there are other rewards too. I receive immense pleasure simply from observing and appreciating those “delicate changes” that occur in a garden. That gardens with a well-chosen assortment of plants also attract birds, butterflies, and other animals is another welcome benefit. Sometimes, being in a garden is all I need…and want. A small universe unto itself.
To be continued…
