Betrothal
I’m betrothed. The contract was signed in the summer, the ink is dry, there is no going back. On the 12th of December this year I will be tying the knot with a new garden (and house) and a project which, with a following wind, will occupy my dreams and energy for decades to come. Luckily, I am also completely in love with the garden to which I am bound. At least I think I am: it can be hard to stay sanguine amongst all the frenzy of the matchmaking process. Like some 17th century prince, I chose my bride (my future garden) on the back of a brief and heavily chaperoned encounter. A second, similar visit served to confirm my ardour although, in truth, we hardly had time to get to know one another. On both visits the garden glowed in the late spring sun, which reached through the doors of the immaculate front hall and open bedroom windows. Like a veiled and bedecked maiden, her eyes lowered, this impression can hardly be the full picture of what a future of living with her will hold.
Still, the instant we were informed we had a rival for her hand our intentions solidified. We threw our hat in the ring and within the month the house was ours. Giddy and exhilarated, I was left clutching a 4-page brochure and a handful of my own hurried photographs: the real estate equivalent to one of those stunning miniature portraits presented to a king awaiting his bride. With a 6-month enforced wait before we can move in, my impatient, unconsummated love has gradually intensified to a height of passion I can hardly stand. I am truly lovesick.
Perhaps concerningly this impatience has led me down the path of obsessive stalking. With the aid of google maps I spend my evenings retracing her boundaries, her contours and eccentricities. We are temporarily staying in a bungalow 15 minutes’ walk away, close enough to allow for endless self-torture. On my first free morning after the move, I yomped the footpath that links our road with the meadow behind the house. Forced to stop some distance away across a field, I paused, panting, to gaze at the huge old conifers which mark out the voluptuous curve of the back garden. On my walk back I scared a deer which bounded off. A verse of the Song of Solomon came to my mind:
‘My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. He stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice. My beloved calls to me ‘Arise my darling. Come away with me, my beautiful one…’
As I became bolder, I took to driving circuitously past the front gate on my way to the shops; the post office; the school run; the GP. I pause to gaze at the entrance: a long, sunny, south facing bank beneath oak trees. In my mind I have already studded it a hundred times with crocus and narcissi, scilla and little creamy species tulips. I’ve lovingly filled the back of the bank with great candelabras of foxgloves. Dreaming of these things is always so much easier than the reality of planting them.
As far as I can see there are two great problems with this sort of enforced, long distance courtship. First and foremost, I have built the garden up in my mind to the extent that when we arrive there is a high risk of disappointment as reality bites. Having visited in early summer, I will finally step through the gates a week before the December solstice, that darkest day of the year. In the cold and dark I will look at the endless tangles of rhododendrons (which I loathe) and vast tracts of bamboo (why were they ever planted?!) and I’m quite sure I will panic.
Couples still in the first throws of romance have an irritating habit of making disparaging remarks about each other, as if to prove that, despite appearances, their love is pragmatic, and they see the other clearly. ‘Of course, Johnny couldn’t boil an egg if you paid him. I don’t think you even know where the kettle lives, do you darling?’ with that teasing, ribbing smile. Little does she realise that in 10 years’ time the fact that John can’t cook will drive her to distraction. She’ll be slopping out bolognaise for ungrateful children whilst cursing through her teeth.
I find myself using a similar tone when describing my future garden to friends. ‘The soil is terribly poor – pure sand. And highly acidic too – for a gardener who can’t stand azaleas! I must be mad, but I do love a challenge!’. Perhaps I’m trying to persuade myself that I know what I am getting into, calming the growing fear that I have bitten off more than I can chew. Perhaps in 5 years I will throw in the towel in desperation and look for a garden on clay. Bamboo 1, Katy nil.
The other great risk is that in my impatience to break ground, to plunge a spade into the soil, I will awkwardly fumble my first spring in the garden and make all sorts of embarrassing mistakes, rather than taking the time to get to know her properly. Advice to all new gardeners (or old gardeners of new gardens) is to wait and watch for a year. Understand the sunlight, the seasons, the soil. Undertake a gentle wooing of the garden to ensure a harmonious, long-term relationship. I am sorely tempted to break all the rules. I have already mapped paths in my mind, removed beds and built new ones, installed a greenhouse. I have mentally carved and moulded every inch of her, imposing upon her my own horticultural fantasies. I take a deep breath and hope I find the patience to wait and watch as her own personality unfolds before me.
For now, I’m trying to focus myself on the practicalities of the move ahead and drag my dreams back indoors to the very pressing issues of where we will sleep, sit and eat. Being a gardener with no garden is frustrating, but the relationship which awaits me promises to be rich, fulfilling, and like all lovers on the eve of marriage, I am naively full of hope that it will be easy and trouble free. I will make mistakes, and she will exasperate me. I’m pregnant, due to have a baby in March, and after lavishing the garden with attention in our first honeymoon months, I will no doubt neglect her more than I should. But over the years we will find our way.
For now, I have contented myself with ordering tulips for the two empty planters by the front door: a token compromise to my eagerness, and a gift to the house on the day we are united.
