Mari Lane Gewecke
While winter weather may put outdoor gardening activities on hold, we can use the time to plan for next season, peruse garden catalogs and magazines, and ponder the joys of gardening. I enjoy reading about gardens and gardeners. Sometimes a little inspiration from others helps sustain us through the winter months.(tncms-asset)d4c08082-960e-11ee-948a-b3a15f226f8f[0](/tncms-asset)
In an article describing garden areas in the 152 acres around the Indianapolis Museum of Art, its top horticulturist was quoted as saying, “I’m a gardener. That makes me an optimist because I put seeds in the ground, and I expect something to happen over and over again.” (Jonathan Wright, Ruth Lilly Director of The Garden and Fairbanks Park, Indianapolis).
Boy, is that the truth! We must be optimists; a pessimist might try gardening for one or two years, then quit in frustration.
British horticulturist Monty Don notes, “A garden is not a place. It’s a journey.”
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And Tom Stuart-Smith (British landscape architect, garden designer and writer) says, “A garden is fundamentally a process – there is change, and sometimes it is dying, and sometimes is hibernating.” His life’s work in garden design is the subject of “Tom Stuart Smith: Drawn from the Land,” which includes his own essays on inspiration and methods.
I appreciate Stuart-Smith’s attitudes about gardening, which are like my own: “… It’s much more to do with how you feel about your garden than how it looks. It could be that your garden is the most fantastic mess, but if you love it, because there’s a fox living in one corner, and a lot of snails whom you know personally by name and you have a sort of in-depth relationship with it, then it’s a good-enough garden.” (Tom Stuart-Smith). My garden will not be featured in Fine Gardening, but it is good enough for me.
Something else I have in common with Stuart-Smith is planning for the landscape beyond my time in it: “I think a lot about next year, but I also think, absolutely, about what it’s going to be like when I am dead.” (Tom Stuart-Smith).
We strategically installed a gingko tree 17 years ago in an area where it can provide shade to the south side of our house when the enormous and old silver maples are gone. We’ll be gone, too. That’s how long it will take. Someone, someday, will thank us.
John O’Donohue, the Irish poet, wrote a beautiful meditation valid in all seasons and perhaps even more so in the silence of winter:
“Landscape isn’t just matter.
It is actually alive, and it recalls us
into a mode of silence and solitude
where you can truly receive time.”
I hope you find inspiration in your landscape this winter season.
Since 2004, Mari Lane Gewecke has been a Master Gardener volunteer, affiliated with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus program. She is a semi-retired consultant in philanthropy.
