In this series we’re exploring places that affect and shape our lives; places where we feel connected, rooted, peaceful, “at home.”
As places of beauty and spaces providing enjoyable pastimes, gardens have been favorite places for master gardeners and amateurs alike, providing pleasure for poets, artists, saints, and world leaders. leaders. Informal and formal, they’ve provided settings for literature and films.
Gardens exist in a place. Amhurst, Massachusetts was the backdrop for Emily Dickinson’s garden.Yes, Dickinson, the iconic poet, was a gardener. She collected wildflowers, studied botany at Amhurst College, tended plants in a glass conservatory and a flower garden, and gave pressed flower cards as gifts. She forced bulbs inside during the long harsh winters, and dug in the dirt as soon as the ground thawed. Eager for spring, she proclaimed March the Month of Proclamation. Gardening was the inspiration for many of her poems.
Mable Ringling’s gardens are situated on Sarasota Bay, where, as part of the Ringling Circus Museum, on the estate of the Italian-style villa, Ca’ d’Zan, her Rose Garden boasts over one thousand bushes, and 400 varieties. Her Secret Garden, is an informal collection of bromeliads, succulents, and bougainvillea. In Mable’s Dwarf Garden, whimsical statues peek out from among bromeliads, hibiscus, and bamboo.
In Francis Burnett’s novel, a garden becomes a place of healing for the young, spoiled, and bad-tempered orphan, Mary, who goes to live with her uncle on the Yorkshire Moors. Left to herself, Mary meets Dicken, her housemaid’s brother, and learns about a “secret” garden on the estate. After a friendly robin leads Mary to find the key to the garden, she and Dicken begin tending overgrown dormant rose bushes. When they discover the uncle’s son, Colin, who is bedridden with a supposed spinal deformity, they arrange for him to join them in the garden and help them revitalize the place they’ve discovered. Through their friendship and interactions with nature, they become healthier and happier: “All that troubled her [Mary]was whether the roses were dead or perhaps some of them had survived and put out leaves and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want a dead garden. How wonderful it would be if thousands of roses grew on every side!” (Secret Garden, Chapter 9)
The small rural town of Giverny, north of Paris, is the setting for Claude Monet’s famous gardens. He spent years transforming Clos-Normand into a living en plein air (outdoor) painting, planting thousands of flowers in straight-lined patterns. In 1893 Monet he converted a vacant lot across the road from the Clos-Normand into a water garden by diverting water from the stream Ru, an arm of the Epte river. That garden became famous for his paintings of water lilies, its green Japanese bridge, and oriental plants. Monet was so proud of his garden, he received his guests there and spent hours contemplating it. “All my resources go into my garden. It is my most beautiful masterpiece. I am in raptures.”
Chartwell, on the western boundary of Kent, became Winston Churchill’s getaway.. He was captivated by the tranquility of the house and gardens, and when Downing Street called, he fretted, “A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted.” The walled garden, which Churchill helped build, is planted in traditional English cottage style. The one thousand rose bushes in the Golden Rose Walk, were a gift to the Churchills from their children on their golden wedding anniversary. Looking past the gardens to the countryside beyond, Churchill observed, “I bought Chartwell for this view.”
Even Cicero, the Roman statesman, loved gardens. In 106 B.C. he wrote, “If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need.”
I feel closer to God when digging in my garden.
It shouldn’t surprise us that gardens play such a role in our lives – after all, “God Almighty first planted a garden; indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. (Francis Bacon)
Janet Hasselbring – janethasselbring23@gmail.com
janet hasselbring 