Gardens

Gardens fascinate me. They speak directly to the question of how we regard ourselves in relation to the world around us. The garden is an absolute construct, a living art installation, and as much about the personality of the gardener as it is the plants which he or she chooses to grow. It’s what happens when you put a person on a plot of land, and say “here, look after this, and call it your own, if you like.’ It’s the place where, for a while, we allow ourselves to revel in the illusion that we’re in control – we plant and prune and propagate, delighting in our mastery of the natural processes which we seek to study and categorise under botany or ecology or horticulture. But turn your back for a moment, and nature rolls over you, overwhelming all in a joyous, elemental rush, blurring our neat edges, and rearranging our carefully considered plans. This is the natural order of things; this is how it was before we arrived and, when we are gone, how it will be again. But in the meantime, we make our gardens.

...on, to weeds