The big picture

For many gardeners, much of the joy revolves around that constant quest for bigger, better, more, di erent, writes MICHAEL McCOY

Everyone visiting a particularly lovely private garden assumes that the owners dwell in some kind of horticultural heaven, perpetually wallowing in the glow and glory of their achievement. But they don’t.

The home gardeners I know who have achieved the most in their gardens are deeply discontent. They may have taken this delightful and infuriating art form to its highest standards, but they’re never fully happy with the end results, no matter how awestruck visitors may be. They’re a driven people. Some are driven nearly mad.

This is hilarious, given most of us would think that what we want from our gardens is a deep sense of peace and wellbeing. But contentment, so it seems, is neither the driver nor the by-product of good gardening.

About 20 years ago, not long after arts festival director and then-obsessed home gardener Leo Schofield took over the lease of Bronte House in Sydney, he asked me if

I’d help him with the garden. By then, he’d had his hugely energetic gardener remove everything that wasn’t really singing, and had jammed the beds full of his favourite plants.

Having established which ones would perform in Sydney’s coastal climate, he asked if I’d arrange the survivors and thrivers to best effect. I thought it was an intimidatingly good garden before I began, and couldn’t get over the privilege. But Leo knew it could be far better. When he said, “If this garden is limited to my capabilities, I’ll never be happy with it”, I was as much disarmed by his self-knowledge as struck by its application to nearly every good gardener I know.

But to speak of committed and competent gardeners being perpetually discontent is not to say they don’t experience a reward for their efforts. The rewards are massive. I don’t know of a gardener, at any level, who hasn’t known great joy or punch-the-air triumphs. One minute you’re transfixed by a rich perfume, and the next you’re on your knees, in awe and wonder, before a bulb in diminutive flower. There are moments of transforming tranquility and times of such rich connectedness with the great and humbling force of nature that we’re brought close to tears.

What’s weird is these manifold rewards, even when extreme, don’t tend to lead to complacency. In fact, they nearly always drive us to seek even greater rewards. I’m guessing you haven’t, say, won Wimbledon, and experienced the roughly two minutes of deep satisfaction winners speak of before being overtaken by the need to win again.

But how often have you conquered a difficult sudoku or crossword, and then, with hardly a pause for celebration or self-congratulation, turned the page to start on the next?

All appetites grow from being fed, and the bigger and better the rewards from our gardens this year, the proportionally bigger and better we’ll want them next year. It’s the only means by which great gardens are created. Garden contentment is elusive and arguably counter-productive, but the rewards are deep, rich and highly addictive.

Michael blogs at thegardenist.com.au