I have two Kentucky gardens. Both are a privilege and a burden. One is in the city, the other in the country. I can’t work either of them with the same energy I once had. I am 73 and, besides living with M.S. for over 20 years with only minor difficulties, I am not complaining. I love my gardens, but am I simply delusional?

There is one more nagging question.

Do any of you with overflowing hubris imagine your gardens will continue beyond your own graves?

The worrywart

Every day, I think about a garden forever after.

Rose has taken over the city one-third acre lot. She is not a worrywart nor as fussy as I am. It takes confidence to allow a few species to dominate in a survival of the fittest sort of way. Hers is a glorious highwire act of wildness, with northern sea oats, American beak grass, and aromatic aster sprinkled with attention-seeking double peonies.

Rose with peony ‘Festiva Maxima’

For two weeks, in Louisville and Salvisa, I have bundled up in five layers every time I went outdoors.

We have had an unusual and prolonged early spell of winter cold that could freeze the hinges off the gates of Hell. Rufus still needed to do his business this morning  The temperature was  below O° F (-18 C) this morning in Salvisa.  Not quite Edenic.

Rufus the King of the Hill  last September in Salvisa

January is ordinarily a time the of year when doubt creeps in like a flashback of eggnog hangovers in December.

The annual refrain: I beseech thee, merciful mother. Grant me one more blessed year in the garden, and I will forsake eggnog forevermore.

My daughter-in-law, for Christmas, gave me Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time—In Search of a Common Paradise. Thank you, Kylie.

I took a load off while my paradise outside was covered in snow and ice.

Garden photos courtesy of Olivia Laing

Laing, a talented writer, herbalist, social critic, and environmental activist began a makeover of a Suffolk house and garden with her husband, shortly before Covid. The property, a tangled mess, was once owned by the late, garden designer, Mark Rumary.  The longtime gardener was not hampered by overwhelming self-doubt, but the nagging devil began poking, “Why did anyone garden? Why did I?”

“Over the last year of work,” Laing wondered, “I’d noticed in myself a constant toggling back and forth between the need for control—evict the lamium! clarify the borders!—and a desire for plentitude.”

I know the feeling.

And what is truly original?

“…there really is no limit to what can be done with plants.” Laing writes with the bravado of a garden center pitch person, but the reality of every springtime gardener, who also needs help with a design, is laid bare.  “Even the so-called experiments rarely involve more than a shake-up of the conventions concerning permissible shape and especially colour combinations. It’s very rare to see something truly original, not a copy of a copy.”

Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in 1999

Rare to have a nuclear plant for a garden backdrop

Sea kale, gray santolina and a wild imagination

Derek Jarman’s garden on the Kent coast in Dungeness is not a copy, but Laing submits: “A garden dies with its own.” Jarman died of AIDs in 1994, yet his cottage and iconic garden are now overseen as a memorial. Does cultural landmark sound more enduring?

Paradise memorials often fail the smell taste.

The ill-begotten gardens of the Middletons of England and South Carolina don’t get off easily.

Laing gives considerable thought to John Milton’s Paradise Lost and makes an argument for a common utopia.  Why can’t everyone enjoy the privilege of a garden paradise?

The days are growing longer

I can’t control nature or be certain of how the new growing season will unfold, but for starters I pray there will be no tornadoes or floods. I will look for solace every day with friends and neighbors, and while walking alongside strangers in Louisville’s Olmsted-designed Chickasaw Park.

 I will build upon moments of paradise— in Marianne Willburn’s words— “Distracted by Joy.” 

Yang-style Tai Chi and Zhineng Qigong help soothe my overstimulated monkey brain. I am trying to rejigger my numbskull brain to adopt a common paradise as my default.

There were a few snowdrops in bloom before the snow and ice came two weeks ago. I am ready for their return.

Where the mind goes, the body will follow.

Giddy up, brain.

Slow down and do as I tell you.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Here’s the hard part.

Will my vision of paradise in Salvisa be granted everlasting life long after I am gone?

Surprise me.

******

You certainly have 30 minutes to spare?  BBC broadcaster Matthew Parris and Olivia Laing drive to East Sussex to visit Great Dixter and discuss the life and influence of Christopher Lloyd. Laing calls Dixter a “magnificent outpost of Eden.” Head gardener Fergus Garret joins the conversation.

Robert Savery’s The Garden of Eden (1622)