How to garden (Step 1 - Do Nothing)

There are plenty of proverbs extolling the virtues of hard work in the garden. ‘Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade’ (Rudyard Kipling), ‘Gardening requires lots of water…most of it in the form of perspiration’ (Lou Erickson) and ‘You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind’ (Anon) are just a few. These insights reflect a truth about gardens - that they represent a taming of nature, to one degree or another, and the level of taming is directly proportional to the amount of effort.

Beauty though is in the eye of the beholder and how tame your garden needs to be in order to be beautiful is up to you. Our perception of what makes for a beautiful garden can change over time and one of the tricks to being content with our plot of earth is to find, or develop, a style we like that is in balance with the effort we are willing, or able, to expend.

But I digress a little. The question is ‘How will doing nothing help the garden’? By ‘doing nothing’ I really mean watching the garden, engaging with it but without trowel or lawnmower in hand. Just looking, often, will help to understand the rhythm of the garden (and the balance between it and nature), to spot the little signs of change (that may suggest that the time for action will soon be upon you) and to appreciate the small, incidental, fleeting pleasures that enhance garden life (the Moorhens icy footprints like drunken arrows).

A recent supplement in the Guardian explored the question of where people in creative occupations get their inspiration from. It was suggested by one contributor that time spent doing nothing was important. David Hockney has said that the qualities he is able to imbue his paintings with is derived from observing the landscape at depth until he has a deep understanding of it.

I have in the past discouraged my wife from prolonged periods of gazing out of the window, because my impulse ‘to do’ has always been stronger than that for reflection (and partly because of what the neighbours might think of course). Recently though I have tried it for myself, and have noticed a few things. One being that the more relaxed you are, the busier the birds seem to be, and the less tame you feel the garden needs to be (the happy consequence of which is that less work will need to be done).

This year therefore I will be taking a leaf out of Mirabel Osler’s book and making sure there is plenty of time spent doing nothing in the garden. She observed that ‘Sitting in the garden is a feat to be worked at with unflagging determination and single-mindedness’, and as a garden designer and writer in her eighties she should know.

Postscript. I have just noticed that the fresh shoots of the Phlox in the front garden are pushing up vigorously so some cutting back needs to be scheduled in. Enough of doing nothing, there’s work to be done.