Long ago, I gave up the idea that any two people think alike, especially about personal gardens. This is never more so, when my thoughts run free as I garden.
My garden is my joy. I dreamed it up, as I lay in bed day dreaming, through the winter of the year of my fiftieth birthday. My fiftieth birthday was the same year as my mother's ninetieth birthday. She wanted to do something special for me. It is my garden I missed most, when I moved here, so I asked for a garden.
For a city, we had a big back yard. My children were the fifth generation of the family that lived in the house. It had quirks we loved. A great big old maple tree reigned from a back corner of the yard. This is where my daughters and some of their friends pressed their ears hard against the rough bark to hear the fairy elevator go up and down inside the tree, when they were small. This is where the fairies left them sparkly tiny treasures. It is also where they buried most of their grandmother's costume jewelry, for the fairies.
Under the shady, ancient friend, I grew a wild flower garden. Trilliums from a friend's farm, lady slippers from the cottage woods, ferns from beneath a cottage window, perriwinkle that grew wild on land where the Ontario government had once planned a second airport - violets white and purple, umbrella plants, jacks-in-the- pulpits and the list goes on.
Under my bedroom window, in full sun, was my second garden. Rich pink, climbing roses, likely planted by my great grandfather, grew up to the second floor. Between the roses I planted a non spectacular little garden. It is here I planted the special plants my family or friends gave me. I usually plant a perennial in honour of people or occasions, so this garden was full of so many memories. All of this continues to grow in my imagination, but I can't smell the roses, when I wake up early on a summer morning.
My new garden, at my home by the sea, became a creation. A neighbour pulled up, behind the truck, huge pieces of driftwood and logs that washed up on shore. These logs and curiosities were arranged in a large circle. A path edged by logs, opened from the grass into the centre making it possible to walk in and be surrounded by garden. A willow hangs overhead. A truck brought topsoil of questionable origin to make the garden. I set out to make the dirt into the black gold my mother always had in her gardens. This remains a goal.
All this sounds very grand, but it isn't. To be honest it is one of a kind, in that one of a kind style. It is small, as gardens grow and has been deemed peculiar by some visitors. The first year it appeared, the spring arrivals teased me that there must have been an extremely high tide in the winter. We have the highest tides in the world, but to have reached the garden's position, the tide would have had to rise thirty feet up the cliff and then a couple of hundred feet inland. That is a little much, even considering global warming. What they were saying was that it looked like the beach's flotsam and jetsam had made it pretty far inland.
Despite all this, I loved it from the beginning. I make some of the garden decisions and allow the plants to make some their choices. The wild thyme has taken a course all of its own.
Fifteen years later I stand at my bedroom window and see a dream still coming true below.
Right now the garden is in its beyond tangled garden phase. I promised myself, I would bring the house a little order, before I go out to the garden where my heart already is, so I must be off to chase a few dust balls and move stacks of paper of unknown origin from one room to another.
I do want to get the the garden ready for my small grand children when they come to visit this summer and and make it welcoming to any fairies that may choose to live here while they are visiting.
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