MEMORIES HAVE LONG ROOTS

“This peony reminds me of my gardening friend and guru Dorothy. It was 30-plus years old when she gave it to me many years ago.”

By LADYBUG

Claire Masset has gathered gems from famous gardeners, artists and writers and woven their thoughts into a tapestry of her own experiences as she explores this “unbroken thread that connects us to our ancestors”.

Chapters are titled Beauty, Work, Order, Nature, Sanctuary, Therapy, Growth, Spirit, Love and Happiness. Quotes from Vita Sackville-West, Claude Monet, Monty Don, Gertrude Jekyll, Virginia Woolf and others illuminate the pages.

In the chapter Work:

I have done only one sensible thing in my life – to cultivate the ground. – Voltaire.

To this, Masset adds: “Tomorrow I’ll probably feel sore from all the bending and lifting. I don’t care. I am restored. This is actual, proper work. None of the screen-based game of email ping-pong, video calls and report-writing that the week is filled with. This is real, salt-of-the-earth work. And – if you’ll pardon the pun – gardening work may not pay the bills, but it repays us in spades.”

And in Therapy:

The garden came to me because I needed it. – Barny Bardsley.

Masset: “Gardening, like other creative pursuits such as playing the piano or painting, has the power to absorb you entirely, to such an extent that you almost become what you are doing. When this happens, you experience a feeling of at oneness with the world. You are no longer trapped in your head, at the mercy of worry or tension.”

I read this and recall my friend and gardening guru Dorothy saying there was nothing like weeding to clear the mind. And now I get so lost in weeding, pruning, watering or whatever the gardening task at hand that my husband says he approaches me carefully so as to not startle me out of my reverie. He calls it my meditation.

From the chapter Love:

Often I hear people say, “How do you make your plants flourish like this?... What is your secret?” And I answer them with one word, “Love”. – Cella Thaxter

Masset: “Memories, like my lovely old shrubs, have long roots in gardens. Before you know it, you can find yourself retrieving lost loved ones – friends, grandparents and children who are now all grown up, including yourself.”

If in the throes of the gardening season you read just one book on gardening, let it be this on the art, science, philosophy and joy of gardening.

GET GROWING!

MEMORIES HAVE LONG ROOTS