Unveiling Lives Through Gardens: A Gardener's Perspective

I have been gardening for people for a decade. To me, being invited into your garden is a precious gift. A ticket to see your life; it can tell me who you are. A garden holds snippets of the details of the past -your stories, the material of you. The edges made straight or curved, the colours that make your heart sing, the shapes that make you feel safe. Each part of the garden tells a tale in the reason for its existence. A wall that was sturdily built during a breakup carving some stability back into the world. A rose ceremoniously planted during your grief for a sister. A tree not to be touched after an argument with a since lost husband.

I have worked in gardens that were once somebody's treasure, but age, life, or death has stopped the jewel from shining. They tell the tale of being shelved, passed over, put on hold. Gardens will wait, taking care of themselves. Nature quietly marching on. Working on these gardens is like opening biographies. They have begun to tip into the world of wilderness, shrubs have grown leggy, stretching themselves upwards to compete each other for light. My job is to rediscover their form. Find the shape of a lost border. Uncover a brick path that has been enveloped by grass, or the shoots of a peony peeking up through some undergrowth hidden from the sky. I imagine the moments of hard work that went into placing the bricks, or digging the hole for bulbs. Hefting the compost, mulch, and water. The labour to give a rose the best start, so it will last for the generations to come. The small personal histories that have made their marks on the land.

In one garden that backed onto the family farm, the couple had woven themselves into the landscape for their whole married lives. Shaping the world around them with their stories. They could tell me why each tree was planted in the fields around their home. The tales of the single bulbs carefully buried, now grown into clumps so large they create a carpet in spring. To see the garden was to see the shadows of them working the soil, learning to be parents, grandparents. Learning to be old, and let it all go on without them. I gardened bits of land their bodies could no longer reach, and returned to them the postcard notes on how their plants were growing. It felt like giving them letters from old friends.

One of my favourite gardens, made favourite by the owner more so than what the garden contained, was home to a dead tree. The gnarled and cracked, near black wood drew the eye, it was the first thing you saw in the garden that was actually filled with roses and clematis, iris and herbs. I made the suggestion that we should remove the dead wood and make space for something new. The owners beautiful blue eyes opened wide in something like horror. Then a smile erupted on her face. 'No,' she said. Her husband had died before I had met her, he had been the gardener, but she had loved this tree. He had mooted removal when the signs of death had only just begun, but she told him he could remove it over her dead body. So, the tree remained, but we added a clematis to scramble over its frame. So the biodiversity of death was allowed to remain, and I am sure overall the garden was the better for it.

Some of these forgotten gardens have a new caretaker, who is daunted by the place and the plants they have inherited. These incoming custodians fear making mistakes, that the plants will judge what they do. Like the stories the garden holds are too reverend to be interrupted by novice hands. Perhaps they don't yet understand that gardening is not a craft you can finitely learn or finish. Just like living, a garden is made of the tasks that went to build it rather than what it has become. Any changes are just part of the story, for better or worse, they are never the end. Plants do not judge, to me they seem the most forgiving of creatures, tolerant of all human folly, gently growing and watching on, while we learn the real ways of the world. My role is to hold these new gardeners' hands and lead them out into the light, bright, fresh air. Inside I am singing, skipping, my heart is leaping, knowing that what they are about to find will make their lives so much more.

In return, I learn from all these gardens and their gardeners, old and new. Just like each plot has a microclimate and biome that wields a power over what a plant will become, every gardener has their own set of rules for how they will nurture a piece of land. A weed in the morning becomes a treasured plant in the afternoon depending on where I am. These nuances are what make a garden so much a part of their owner. There is no one way to garden, and finding your own way is part of the joy. Every decision you make in a garden adds to your fastenings to it. Above all else, my goal is to encourage those connections. After all, the benefits of human connection to the soil are just beginning to be understood. Or rather, the consequences of disconnection from it are starting to be felt.

If you ask someone about their garden, they will never tell you it is exactly how they imagine it to be. There is always something they want to do, always a project in the wings, they are waiting for a plant to be bigger, or for a flower to form. Unlike decorating a room which can be finished, a garden is a never-ending story, a process. It connects you to the past and pulls you into the future. A moving time capsule of you. To ask someone about their garden is to ask someone who they are and take a meandering walk beside them in their world.

Working in someone's garden seems like a modest invitation. Really, it is a gift.