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I thought I was ahead of the pack a few years ago when I came up with the brilliant new idea of Slow Gardening. I was on my way to a Slow Food event and thought this concept transposed simply to gardens. Then, a few months later at a talk by Sydney horticulturist Bernard Chapman I heard that traditional Japanese gardeners would sit at the site for a new garden for maybe six weeks before even starting to think about a design.
This photo of me in Green Park wearing a t-shirt with the phrase ‘je ne sais quoi’ translated into Mandarin is by Lynda
Today I discover Karel Čapek, inventor of the term ‘robot’ and writer of The Gardener’s Year (as well as War with the Newts…), was writing in 1931 about an American millionaire seeking advice from an English country gentleman on how to achieve a ‘perfect, even, level, fresh, everlasting…English lawn’.
Lawn at Powis Castle, Wales
A little later in the same book (The Gardener’s Year) Čapek estimates it will take him 1100 years to grow all the plants he finds interesting. Clearly gardening takes time, and good and interesting gardening takes a long time.
Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew Gardens
Back in 2009, when I welcomed people to a Slow Food Bush Food Picnic at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, I said (and I’ve covered this before) that slow food fits perfectly with the approach we take to gardening in botanic gardens. This was not to say that our staff didn’t work hard – they most certainly did and do – but good gardens take a long time to grow. This particular one, on Sydney Harbour, had taken 193 years, so far.
Little Sparta, design Ian Hamilton Finlay
So I encouraged the picnickers to plant small trees. They would not only get better established specimens but have the satisfaction of creating something to be enjoyed by their kids, or their kids or friends. I said we should treat a garden as a process, not a product (echoing it turns out the Scottish poet and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay, who famously said a garden is not an object but a process).
I then broke into my oft repeated refrain about growing plants we like rather than plants we think are worthy. At the picnic we were about to eat local food, and lots of local bush food. I said I encouraged growing local plants in gardens but more importantly, any plants as long as they don’t harm the environment around us. My three rules for gardening, also oft repeated, are: no toxic chemicals to survive, not escaping into the bush, and relying on as little potable water as possible.
So looking back, I think I was onto a good thing but plenty of people have been onto it before me. I also accept that I don’t have the patience to be a good Japanese gardener: I’d have to read a book or listen to music or walk around in circles…well, you get the idea.
Still I do like the idea of spending a year or so with a garden before making any changes. You need to see it in every season and every light. Only then can you really make the best of the place and the plants already there.
Or at the very least you can get some good book reading done. And on that front, I’d suggest Karel Čapek for something a little different.
That quote about a garden being not an object but a process is the best I’ve heard for a long, long time, Tim!
Yes it’s great isn’t it. Nice to hear from you Anne – hope to catch up when I return to Melbourne in March 2013.
Tim
Me too! Greatly looking forward to your being here.
Too true, Tim.
I always feel a bit on edge when people say they want to come and see my garden, as if it is a finished object, and not, as you say, a process. I find myself explaining and justifying the “undone” and half done and the about to be done aspects, playing into this nonsense of it not being “complete’.
When, pray tell, is a garden ever complete?
I must tell them the story of the Englishman who told the American it would take 300 years to grow a good lawn.
Thanks for the lovely post.
Julie
Thanks Julie. Glad this strikes a chord!
Tim