No two gardens are the same. No two days are the same in one garden.
Hugh Johnson
This should really
be two gardens, four personalities. It's not just the personalities
of the gardens, but also of its owners, or perhaps six if you count
the character of both countries.
Many of us have
more than one garden in our lives and we experience a kind of
creative schizophrenia in which we long for one when we are in the
other. We imagine what is emerging from the soil of the other, what
needs doing.
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| French colour has a certain 'Je ne sais quoi...' |
I think one of
my favourite garden writers is Elsa Bakalar, an English woman who wrote
about creating her garden in Massachusets in the second half of the
twentieth century (whom Piers knew all his life, up until the time
she died). She said – of having two gardens in one's life: 'As
many of us know, “getting away from it all” can turn into “taking
it all with you”'.
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| Finding inspiration in Margery Fish's garden |
Selfishly and for a
simple life I would like to do all the deciding myself. But Piers
also lives with our gardens and he needs to be considered and to
contribute. In reality he has better ideas than me on some aspects
of gardening, and if we can pool our ideas, we shall get a more
creative outcome.
The nationality of
the gardens is also a deciding point. In a way the style of the
English garden decides itself. To have anything other than a cottage
garden to go with a Tudor cottage, that has been a working place for
centuries, would seem perverse. In France, we have a different
building to consider, the natural light and flora can't be denied.
But here there is endless scope to look at things afresh and create
something unique.
