My Garden My Sanctuary?

Garden as a sanctuary. My garden as my sanctuary. Is my garden my sanctuary?

For many, the strange time of Covid-19 lockdown turned their garden into their sanctuary, but for me my garden has always been a sanctuary – of a sort. Indeed not only my current garden, but also those I’ve owned before. (If one can own a garden and not just be a guardian – but therein lies another discourse).

And it’s not just my own garden which gives me sanctuary. Despite the lack of surrounding fences, my allotment over the years has been a place of sanctuary. Then there are the gardens which belong or belonged to my mother, her father, my sister. These beloved people – gardeners all – with their gardens have given me that inner stillness over the years.

To me this raises the question: is it the garden or the gardener who creates the sanctuary?

And indeed: What is sanctuary? Definitions call it a place of refuge away from danger or pursuit. It is a safe, restful, peaceful place, usually, but not exclusively, a holy place, generally enclosed. A refuge for refugees during the Middle Ages as well as in modern times.

So are we using a different understanding of the term sanctuary when we refer to our gardens as sanctuaries? If peacefulness is an essential part, do we always find it in our gardens?

Not every gardener finds sanctuary in their garden and not all gardens are sanctuaries. For many, not just professional gardeners, even when sitting their eye is roving looking for tasks to be done; their fingers are itching to pull up a lone weed. The garden is a workplace. There is always something to do. Or perhaps they are sitting so as to more easily write lists of the gardening chores to do this week.

Is their garden a sanctuary to them or merely another element of their busy, busy lives? They may not knowingly seek rest, but at night they may dream of peace and wonder how to achieve it. As managers and organisers of people, do they feel frustrated by their garden as it does not conform to their plan?

Wherever we go we take ourselves – that is just as true when we walk out into our gardens. Some have yet to find themselves before they can find sanctuary in their garden.

It is often said of me that I have two paces: full pelt and still. Both are useful attributes when gardening. Full pelt will weed a border, throwing some to the compost bin, some to the hens and others to make a liquid fertilizer. Still is the pause, the space between my bursts of weeding energy, when I feel the sun warm on my back and smile at the robin hopping on the soil. Full pelt is covering up tender plants or bringing them under cover as frost is forecast. It is planting up a border for a design client when the delivery lorry was delayed by traffic. Still is an afternoon pricking out seedlings in the greenhouse, cats helping by curling up in empty seed trays. It is watching a bee carefully gather up pollen from open flowered apple blossom.

Gardens have the capacity to ground us, to remind us of the balance of nature. The scales are steady, there is equilibrium between movement and stillness; day and night; summer and winter; life and death; growth and stagnation.

If sanctuaries are quiet and reflective then such a place is my garden in the early morning. Freed from the background hum of traffic and humans, the soft rustles and chirrups are easily heard when there is but a little breeze. Rough winds and rain make wildlife as reluctant to venture out as we are.

I stand at my back door whatever the weather, whatever the time of year, to drink that first cup of coffee and breathe in the morning sights, sounds and scents. It is a meditative time, a re-affirming that my garden has a life of its own.

Like many I have noticed a greater instance of birdsong during lockdown. But I turn this around. For me it is a lessening of human noise that makes the early morning garden enjoy itself for longer into the day.

Is my garden my sanctuary or is it that I find sanctuary there? Is there a real difference or is this just playing with words? By finding sanctuary there does my garden then become that place of safety? Perhaps it is my acceptance of the turning wheel of nature, the endless motion surrounding a still calm centre that creates a sanctuary within my garden.

My garden, all my gardens and those I grew up in, have been my teachers. I have learnt to have respect for the garden, the plants and creatures within it. To gain an acceptance of garden pests as well as predators, because without aphids there would be no lunch for ladybirds.

Lets be honest here. I am not resigned to losing some of my planted out pea seedlings to slugs and snails. But when it happens, as invariably it does, I mutter, compost what cannot be saved (perhaps throwing a slug or two into the compost as well) and bring out the next batch to replace them. With the next batch I might try another technique for strengthening the plants, making them less tasty, adding a barrier or sacrificial companion plants. Oh yes, and sowing another batch of seeds. One learns that there are more uses to successional sowing than spreading out the harvesting of crops!

And so my gardens have taught me through past mistakes and successes what works in this garden at this time. By learning from previous years I can plan for the future. I am willing to be adventurous, trying out new seeds, new plants, pushing boundaries, yet growing the tried and tested too. Acknowledging the garden’s past, seeing the future potential and living for the now: this moment is the only one we can be sure of. Perhaps this acknowledgement helps me to feel that my garden is a sanctuary for me.

And a sanctuary for others, too. Just as I found peace and pleasure in other gardens, it seems my little plot offers respite to birds, insects, animals and humans. And I am glad that it is so. Not proud, but pleased. So long as I have my morning’s peace I am more than happy to share if by so doing others find their own sanctuary within this space.

But what is within this haven of mine? There is a flower blooming in my garden virtually every day of the year – even at Christmas time. Most of the flowers are scented, for me that adds to their beauty. And year-round there is something edible to pick. In the depths of winter it is most likely to be evergreen herbs and swiss chard, but there may be an occasional lemon freshly picked from the tree over-wintering in the greenhouse.

It is a small suburban garden and I no longer have the allotment. Although I do garden share with a friend who has a plot large enough for hens and a separate kitchen garden where I carry out the heavy work as she is not able to. So yes, in some ways I garden on thrice the size of plot you may think I have. And in both I like to experiment with plants that are both ornamental and edible.

However, it is my belief that just as we all have different likes and dislikes in food, clothes, music, so too do we have a different need in the finer elements of the sanctuaries that are gardens.

My garden my sanctuary because I do not expect it to give me peace. I tend my garden, loving it for the changes, the challenges, the pleasures of each season.

In return my garden offers me the way through the turmoil of a shifting world to the peace of that inner circle: it allows me to find the sanctuary within myself.

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