THE GARDEN IS A LIVING THING

H.E.Bates

It is nearly Christmas time and that is hard to believe. Such a lot is happening in all our lives, the time seems to rush by. It only seems yesterday that I was busy cooking the Christmas ham and plum pudding in between rushing out to the garden to see what had come into bloom in the last hours. It is nearly a year since our good friends, Maggie and Jack, Suite101 members, came to meet us and the gardens, all the way from chilly Canada.

But when I rush out into the garden now, I can see that twelve months have passed. The garden has grown up! And all that hard labour of last Autumn is paying off. The torn clothes and bodies from trying to force the rose bushes into some semblance of order have been worthwhile, it is certainly going to be a good year for the roses. The back aches from digging up and carting the huge, over the top bushes or trees to a new bed, are also just memories. The smugness and delight I feel on observing their freedom to grow tall and strong and the liberation of their neighbours may be seen in the lushness of new growth with room to stretch their arms. That is worth every little twinge of rheumatism. Why do gardeners not learn to give ample space when planting? We show we are patient when, at the age of sixty something, we buy a tree that takes twelve years before producing its first bloom. Yet we never quite give enough space between the trees and bushes we plant in our new gardens.

The garden has been open to quite a few garden clubs this year and the new [enforced] paths worked well. We had to create new ways around the garden because plants were beginning to grab the passing visitor or, in the worse instances, stop them completely in their tracks. We built new paths around the frustrated plant and now everyone is happy.