Day 132 - No peace

You know, when I started writing this particular blog about my gardening career, I had a clear intention of what I wanted to say, of the advice I wanted to give, of the myths I wanted to debunk and the conclusion I would come to about gardens' place in the history of art. However as I got further and further into the subject, telling the story from the photographs I had, it increasingly took the form of a chronicle and, for me at least, lost its impetus. I am sure it continued to function as a blog, but I had conceived it, as with everything I write, as a unified whole with a definite direction in mind, which increasingly it seemed to grow distant from. So much so, in fact, that I didn't even arrive at the main point I sought to make in the first place. I hope to rectify that here, in this postscript. But forgive me. I just don't get the buzz from writing non-fiction. The creativity lay in the gardening, not in the reporting of it.

Keen readers who are also avid gardeners will have gleaned from the various posts that there is a lot of nonsense talked about gardening, all cloaked in an aura of irrefutable mythology. If I have been able to steer you away from some of that, all well and good. One aim fulfilled. I have also given technical tips on the way, and, frankly, I don't expect many people to change their ways as a result of reading this. It requires dedication to learn how to change the habits of a lifetime, and I have watched far too many professionals flounder in the process of trying to adopt new ways to expect much from this. Suffice it to say that most gardeners are guilty of bad or inefficient practices and could do better. Not that I expect you to listen.

But my main point is quite different. I hope I have managed to get across how the best gardens function as something beyond what most of us think of as the purpose of our patch out the back, how they become works of art. This is partly in their design, but more so in the way they are maintained. I have been quite specific on this throughout. What I haven't touched on is what kind of art they represent.

Sadly, gardens are rather one-sided. They almost always demonstrate a desire for beauty and tranquillity, and as such I believe they are the medium par excellence for achieving this. The problem is that this limits their scope. As I pointed out, I think as far back as Day 1, gardens differ from other art forms in that they are three-dimensional. They are in front, behind, above and below. They are painterly and sculptural. They have a time element built in, they change with the seasons and with the years. They have sounds and perfumes. And stenches. They are tactile. This is what makes their maintenance such a crucial part of the art. Without it they would become something else. Other art forms combine some of these elements, but no other form has all of them. Gardening is the consummate art form, harnessing natural forces and materials for the production of something within the mind of the artist.

Yet for some reason, we rarely go beyond the idea of creating beauty and peace. Oh, certainly there have been some attempts at conceptual gardens, most of which are trite statements which have no lasting impact except as a flower show gimmick. Or there are large works such as Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation in southwest Scotland, based around expressing science in landscape form, and Ian Hamilton Findlay's Little Sparta in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, which is a rambling place characterised by poetry and slogans carved in stone dotted around the site within something which is quite a loose interpretation of what a garden might be. I applaud these attempts to do something different with the landscape, to make a different statement, but even so, nothing I have seen quite achieves what I always wished I would have the opportunity to do. It is my eternal regret that in the branch of art which I excelled at I was hampered by financial constraints. I could not afford the appropriately-sized parcel of land where I could make my mark, my unique mark which exists nowhere else but within me. I rage inside all the time with the burning question churning within me - where is all the pain, where the anguish in our gardens? Other forms of art have this avenue to explore, whether they be painting, sculpture, writing or music. Why not gardens? Where is the horticultural Guernica, its Garden of Earthly Delights, its Scream?

So I finally exit this blog with the thought that I have failed. All I have managed to create is beauty, tranquillity, peace. I have created a series of illusions in this world of agony. Don't get me wrong. I see the value of that. We need our escape. But the things that are wrong with the world will not cease unless we confront them. My gardens have all been a comfort, never a solution. To my huge regret.

To conclude, I attach my 2012 drawing The Kiss. Two garden pests making love next to a plant they will destroy. There is tension even in beauty. This underworld is never at peace.