Green in the garden is good for you
Whether in a castle garden or the entrance to a tunnel under a road, this colour will take us through the greyer months in the garden
Do you read this newsletter every week? If so, do consider becoming a subscribing member. You get access to the whole of the weekly posts and to the Gardener’s Question Time, access to our Zoom met-ups (the next one is this coming Monday), and the knowledge that you’re paying for the things you find valuable.
First of all, a reminder about our Zoom on Monday 23rd October at 6.30pm UK time! We’re going to be taking a tour around The Gardening Mind to talk through the different features on offer, and to answer any questions you may have about all the way different ways to use this site. The link to the Zoom is at the end of this post.
There's just so much green here. So much calm, gentle energy. It's fresh. It's lush. It feels healthy, somehow, refreshing and mind-cleansing.
Isn’t gardening all about optimism?
I took trips to two gardens this week, both on days where storm clouds threatened and there was a rumble of something ominous in the air. Before I'd left, I'd had a quick look around my own garden to wave possible goodbyes to the dahlias and roses that have been jollying the beds along, accepting that we'd probably got to that stage where the last of those summer colours desperately clinging on were probably going to have their last hurrah. But this bidding farewell to the last of the summer wasn't an exercise filled with sadness: I'm always quick to dispel any associated sadness, for isn't gardening all about optimism? Yes, the petals may fall, but then the leaves of other plants turn red. The pastel pinks of roses may indeed disappear, but they leave in their place a gift basket of scarlet hips, colour for us, food for the birds.
Always looking on the bright side is the way forward in the garden.
On that very grey day last week, I found myself in the gardens at Hever Castle in Kent, on an outing to celebrate a loved one’s birthday. Truth be told, we hadn’t expected to be outside much as the weather forecast had been so very awful, but as we came out of the castle, the rainclouds pushed themselves to either side of us and presented us with a pottering hour.
And I’m just so glad they did. We pottered off, mooching through the long Italian garden and admiring William Waldorf Astor’s admirable collection of statuary and sculpture. It’s truly magnificent here: the castle itself dates from the 14th century, whilst the gardens were built in 1904-8, and to give you an idea of the scale of the whole project, it took around 800 men two years to dig out the 38-acre lake at the far end of this Italian garden. That’s one big lake. But it wasn’t the sculptures that caught my attention this time. There was something else, nature-made, far more absorbing, far easier on the eye, and far more calming.