Southland
I am expansive in my world view and want every human to become a raiser of plants, a sower of seeds, a grower of food.
Robert Guyton’s next-gen gardener
Those close to me, my children and their children too, are expected to do as their gardening dad and granddad does. That doesn’t mean they will though, as any parent with aspirations for their children will know. They choose their own paths.
I haven’t expected them to love the loam, adore the apple or yearn for yams at all stages of their growing up – there are times when Lego or boy- and girlfriends, sailing or Ages of Empires are a greater lure than a Dutch hoe – but I’ve waited for each of them, and their various sprouts, to come into the fold that is horticulture.
And Hollie’s arrived at last. She’s my only daughter, now aged 23, and keener than most her age on tilling the soil and raising families of vegetables.
She’s surprised me. As a teenager, the garden was Deep Space as far as she was concerned, a hostile place to be visited only after donning protective clothing and even then only under great pressure or in dire need. But something has changed; a latent force unleashed, a true calling realised.
Hollie’s now Queen of the Garden, monarch of all she surveys from the veranda of our house.
Much of that view she has cultivated and planted in vegetables and flowers of all stripes.
I’m somewhat mystified by her transformation from book-loving hipster to spade-wielding gardener, but delighted by the role change.
And she’s methodical – something her father is not. Her seedling brassicas and beets survive and thrive where mine traditionally founder and fail. She waters them, shades them from the hot sun, feeds them liquid seaweed and keeps them clear of weeds. When she moves them outside and into their beds, they remain standing and throw out new leaves almost as they land. Mine, on the other hand, only occasionally get even that far, falling at various hurdles of my own making, usually the result of inattention and being easily distracted. Not so the young plants of my ex-hipster daughter. Hence my pride.
She is though, taking the edge off the wildness of my forest garden. Where once there grew a tangled nest of angelica, japonica and echium, there now flourish peas, carefully spaced and provided with bamboo canes for support. My wild entanglements of buddleia, lovage and echium have become tidy beds of parsley and lettuce.
She has an eye for the sunniest spots and the richest soil.
The front garden, sheltered by the house and receiving all day sun, is hers by claim and I’m not going to argue with her about who has what, as I learned long ago not to cross my daughter when she’s determined to have her way. The best loam is hers; I’ll make do with the rest.
It’s more than worth giving up the prime spots though. She’s a producer and draws out from the soil more than I would ever do. Her leafy crops are luxuriant, and the roots on her parsnips and carrots, impressive. Hollie’s vegetables – flowers and herbs too – are ambassadors for their kind.
And she’s thinking beyond the kitchen.
Her leafy salad plants – miner’s lettuce, chickweed, rocket, mesclun, calendula and pea-shoots – she packages in cellulose bags and sells in the organic food cooperative at a fair-but-satisfying price. The herbs she has dotted through my forest garden – alongside the paths, lining the driveway, beneath the clothesline and in every other not-toodensely-planted spot – are picked as needed for cooking, but also gathered, romantically (she’s not abandoned her bookish past altogether), into wicker baskets, dried in bunches hanging from the kitchen roof, and packaged under a clever title, as teas for the discerning, organic, fair trade, herb tea drinker.
I suppose Hollie could be classified as a modern gardener.
Her beds are stylish, her plants hip – no unphotogenic or boring thing grows in her gardens. “You know,” she declared recently, as we were surveying her most recently planted bed of mesclun, “I’m a very good gardener.”
I couldn’t argue with that and wouldn’t anyway, knowing that support and praise are the most valuable things an old gardener can give to a young one.
Holllie, along with her friend Rebecca, an industrious visitor from America who first landed in our forest garden as a wwoofer and has stayed ever since, gardening around the district, have plans to expand, recognising perhaps that there’s a limit to how much of my garden can be safely purloined for their purpose. They have secured the use of a field one street over, where they plan to cultivate and plant enough vegetables to feed the whole town – at least that‘s how it seems to me, as I listen in to their strategic meetings, held amongst the cauli and broccoli in-between bouts of weeding.
Their youthful energy doesn’t tire me, as some older parents report on hearing the plans of their children, but instead stir me to greater efforts of my own.
They make me feel as though the fun has just begun.
And that one day soon, the whole world will be a garden and gardeners will be hailed as heroes, something we all hope for and secretly believe can be true!
How does a gardening father or mother ensure that their children will do as they have done; tickle plants from the soil even as they raised their babies, invest longterm in the physical environment in which their family can grow, play, spend quality time and hide if need be.
I really don’t know for sure, but I reckon starting early helps, carrying babes in arms around the garden, introducing them to leaves and flowers, berries and fruits, twigs, bark, birds, bees and butterflies gives them a big headstart over children cloistered indoors, mesmerised by screens of all sorts and separated from the garden and its healthy elements.
Bearing that in mind, I’m making sure my grandchildren get a daily dose of garden. Perhaps in the years ahead, they’ll be claiming parts of Hollie’s garden for their very own. I’m sure she’ll be as delighted to find them staking their claim in her patch as I am with her occupying mine.