Gardening Gifts

There is something in an Englishman’s (or English woman’s) soul that is deeply rooted in the soil.

The first time I went to England, which was 38 years ago, I was charmed by the gardens in every town. It was midsummer and there was a gardening competition going on at the time, which no doubt accounted for some of the floral profusion, but I remember thinking that every square inch of England had been shaped by landscapers or gardeners, over the millennia, and it was so very beautiful.

My parents were both avid gardeners, as were a lot of their generation in New Zealand. We had flowers, shrubs, trees, and vegetables on our one third of an acre “section”, which was what we called our village lot. With a family of six on the equivalent of the minimum wage, our household budget was only able to stretch so far, and vegetables from the garden were a huge help. My parents were a bit scornful of those who had lawn in place of the garden, because they “couldn’t be bothered”. They seemed to consider disinterest in gardening a moral lapse!

I inherited the love of gardens from my parents – I find such peace in a beautiful garden and visit municipal gardens whenever I can- but I did not inherit my parent’s green thumbs. My plants survive in spite of me, not because of me. The previous owner of our Kentucky home planted hundreds of daffodils and bluebells, which bring me delight every spring, but they are her legacy, not mine, and I thank her out loud, every year. I have added irises, and gladioli, plus day lilies which are a salad buffet for the deer that snack in our yard. But again, anything that survives does so in spite of me, not because of me. My sister is the one who inherited the genes for growing things. I guess those genes are clustered and I missed out.

When I was back in England last year I was still impressed by the gardens. Even in the large cities a lot of people still carve out a small green space for flowerpots or shrubs. There is apparently something in the British psyche that loves to grow things, and I think it dates back a long, long way.

Before the Normans arrived in England and imposed their French sense of how a garden should look, the Anglo Saxons had their own small, individual gardens where vegetables and herbs were grown, and where flowers could be coaxed out of the soil, presumably just because they were lovely. They grazed sheep and cattle on common land. Before the Anglos Saxons, the Celts did the same thing. The cottage garden was essential to their quality of life and the commons provided the space needed for animals to graze.

Even though the enclosure system introduced by the Normans severely limited the amount of land available for common use, many British towns and villages still have a common area that is administered by local authorities and kept for the whole town to use. The locals walk their dogs, take picnic lunches, play pickup games of football and cricket, and hold fairs and festivities in those spaces. It is a venerable and valuable tradition.

I just recently read a whole scholarly article on the health benefits of gardening. It seems that tilling, weeding, planting and pruning all help to lower blood pressure and improve mental health.  I think we all knew this, intuitively, but it’s nice to have scientific corroboration of the fact!

However, I will say this: though I love to be outside, and though I love gardening, my blood pressure is NOT lowered by the sight of the damage that the deer from the woods behind us have done to the leaves of my lilies of the valley! It makes me as mad as a hornet.