She is five years old, and she had spent the morning "making a garden for the fairies", most of which involved digging in a mud puddle. She was gleeful (and muddy).
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We were delighted at her joy, and the fairies may well have been glad that someone was considering their welfare.
A garden's purpose is to make people happy, possibly by providing beauty, food, peace, security, and sometimes by adding a few more tens of thousands of dollars on to the value of the dwelling.
What makes me grin in my garden? A sudden burst of daffodil gold at the end of winter, or a basket of finger limes for kids to break open and suck out the tangy globules, or wombats trundling through the hydrangeas ... at least a dozen things a day, or, basically "everything" as I planted with what I love or find fascinating.
My garden is also inhabited by creatures who have decided that a couple of acres of fruit trees and flowers is a better place to live than the blackberry bushes and dead orchard the garden replaced.
A good garden is as individual as its owner. The "one type suits all" kind of garden - a few shrubs and a retaining wall - actually suits no one. If your garden is more chore and bore, then you need to add a hunk of happiness.
It needn't be much. One rented garden give sits temporary inhabitants pleasure just with tone vast old gum tree. Kookaburras nest in one of its hollows, and other birds perch on its branches, and the humans became voyeurs secretly spying on the domestic life of kookaburras, which is more complex and hilarious than those who haven't lived with them realise.
A single, long blooming rose bush - if it is the right rose - can give a vast amount of pleasure. There's a rose sitting in the bud vase next to me as I write this, a gift from my husband. He picks me a new rose whenever he passes a flower he thinks I'd like, or rather a nice bright rose than he likes. He doesn't approve of my parchment coloured Buff Beauty or pale pink Souvenir de la Malmaison.
One grandson is excited by the blooms of our full-size magnolia Grandiflora "because they're big!" - large enough to serve a roast turkey on, though we didn't.
For other people, the individual plants don't matter. Their perfect garden is a place of peace to soak up sun, or laugh with friends, or play backyard cricket or climb a plum tree and spit out plum stones at passers-by.
Don't waste a garden. If yours isn't contributing to your annual household joy index, do something about it. Now.
What do you want in a garden? A venue for backyard cricket? Privacy from gawkers as you practice downwards facing elephant in your morning yoga? Herbs to turn a basic spag bol into a gourmet wonder? A simple bed of basil, chives, sage, thyme, winter savoury peppermint for herb tea and culinary mint for fruit salad or mint sauce, plus a rosemary bush can enormous pleasure as you pluck the herbs once or twice a day, not to mention considerable bliss for those who get to eat it.
Do you want amusement from your garden? Install chooks, and you will soon learn the basis of the concept "pecking order". Grow a cumquat or a pomegranate to watch the birds turn somersaults to eat them. Watch great-grandma bowl out all the males of the family in backyard cricket.
If you want beauty you'll need to work of what you adore yourself. One person's dream of paradise is another's "that's just a heck of a lot of potential sinus problems". Elegance? You're on your own there, too, as I have never managed to achieve it in either self or garden.
"Joy dispensers" in other people gardens, however, have included a bed of multicoloured kangaroo paws; a maze of paths and terraces bordered by small stone walls that took the owner a decade of weekends to create; a hundred old pear tree that fruits and blossoms prolifically and refuses to die or blow over; a bed of roses with enough flowers to provide bunches for friends, acquaintances, funerals or to decorate an office desk; flowering almonds that hint that spring will come, eventually, despite Canberra's winters; a place to kick a ball around; and a potted red geranium grown from a cutting from the owner's mum.
The world has a happiness deficit just now. A garden with the potential for joy can do a lot to help us endure it.
This week I am
- Planting more greens for winter.
- Muttering at seeds that don't germinate, mostly because of extremely small rations of sunlight.
- Waiting for the sudden inflex of long thick belladonna stems to open into approximately a hundred flesh coloured flowers.
- Rejoicing that my favourite kiwi fruit - the one with the sculpturally twisted stem - has survived being blown down in the last gale. We cut it right back to the curly bit of the stem, and now it's put out two long shoots again.
- Not yet admitting that the weeds in the lower garden have won the war. Winter will defeat them. I hope.
- Deciding golden zucchini are more tender and sweeter than the green varieties, or possibly, that grey sky and lots of rain makes this the perfect year for gold zucchini.
Jackie French
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
Jackie French is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and honourary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. She also writes a gardening column for The Canberra Times.
