Simple Life

In the Beginning

A grande dame, an old beech and other memor ykeepers on the path to this gardener’s genesis

by Jim DoDSon Fifteen years ago, a grande dame

of English gardening named Mirabel Osler smiled coyly over a goblet of merlot and said something I’ll never forget. “You know, dear,” she declared, “being a gardener is perhaps the closest thing you’ll ever get to playing God. Please don’t let on to the Almighty, however. He thinks He gets to have all the fun.”

T he café in Ludlow, Osler’s Shropshire market town, claimed a Michelin star. But the real star that early spring af ternoon in the flowering Midlands of England was Dame Mirabel herself. Spr y and witt y, the 80 -year-old garden designer had reintroduced the classic English “cottage garden” to the mainstream with her winsome 1988 book, A Gentle Plea for Chaos.

T he intimate tale of how she and her late husband transformed their work ing farm into a botanical paradise where nature was f ree to flourish became a surprise bestseller that f ueled a worldwide renaissance in cottage gardening. It’s actually what inspired me to create my “faux English Southern Garden” on a forest hilltop in Maine.

My visit with Osler was one of several stops I was mak ing across England in the spring as par t of a year-long odyssey through the hor ticulture world while researching a book about human obsession with gardens — including my own. W hen I asked Dame Mirabel why mak ing a garden becomes so all-consuming and appealing, she had a ready answer.

“I think among the most valuable things a garden does for the human soul is make us feel connected to the past and therefore each other,” she said, sipping her wine.

“We’re a l l old sou ls, you k now, p e ople who love pla nt s. E sp e cia l ly t re es.”

She was delighted that I shared her enchantment with trees, mentioning a gorgeous old American beech that stood beside our house in Maine and how it became the centerpiece of my own wild garden.

W hen my children were still quite young, we car ved our initials into the beech — as one must do with its smooth, gray bark — hoping our names and the tree might reside together forever, or at least a couple hundred years. Unfor tunately, our great beech was visibly ailing, which sent me on an odyssey to tr y to save it. T hat quest ultimately became a book called Beautiful Madness.

“I think that’s the alchemy of a beautif ul tree,” Dame Mirabel agreed. “T hey speak to us in a quiet lang uage all their own. T hey watch over the days of our lives and will long outlive us. No wonder that ever yone f rom Plato to the Dr uids of Celtic lore believed divinities resided in groves of trees. Trees are living memor y-keepers.”

Mirabel Osler passed away in 2016, age 91. Not long af ter Beautiful Madness was published in 2006, however, she wrote me a charming note to say how much she enjoyed reading about our visit in Ludlow. Tr ue to form, as my wife, Wendy, and I discovered on that unforgettable spring day, Dame Osler’s final garden was a chaotic masterpiece, a back yard filled with beautif ul small trees and flowering shr ubs arching over a narrow stone pathway.

Not surprisingly, as this long, dark winter of 2021 approached its end, Dame Mirabel was on my mind anew as I began serious work and planning on what will be my four th — and likely final — garden.

Five ye ars ago, Wendy a nd I purcha se d a ha ndsome old bungalow in t he neig hb orho o d where I g rew up, a l low ing me to sp end t he nex t t hre e ye ars t r a nsfor m ing it s f ront a nd side yards into my version of a m in iat ure encha nte d forest — my t r ibute to Da me

Spring Breaks Loose

From an impromptu getaway for two, to a spring break with the family, we have packages on the island of Wrightsville Beach that are perfect for any occasion. Our Rendezvous Package is ideal for that special weekend, greeted with wine upon your arrival, dinner in our award winning restaurant, and breakfast in bed. blockade-runner.com

855-416-9086

Mir ab el ’s Shropsh ire garden.

I nicknamed the long-neglected back yard dense with overgrown shr ubs and half-dead trees “T he L ost K ingdom.” Reclaiming just half of this space was another odyssey, but more than a year later — and thanks to the assistance of a younger back and a Bobcat — a promising shade garden of ferns, hostas, Japanese maples and a handsome Yashino Japanese cedar now flourishes there. It reminds me of the many Asian-themed botanical gardens I’ve visited.

T hat lef t only a final section of the “L ost K ingdom” to deal with, which I began clearing late last fall, resulting in a nice blank canvas half in shade, half in sun.

Sinc e Chr ist ma s Day, I’ve sp ent hours just lo ok ing at t h is spac e t he way t he aut hor in me st ares at a bla n k wh ite page b efore st ar ting a new b o ok .

Creating a new garden f rom scratch is both addictively f un and maddeningly elusive — a tale as old as Genesis. It’s neither for the faint of hear t nor sk int of wallet.

Gardens, l i ke ch i ldren, mat ure a nd cha nge over t ime. At b est , gardeners a nd parent s must ac c ept t hat we are, in t he end, simply lov ing c aret a kers for t hese l iv ing a nd bre at h ing work s of ar t. A lt houg h t he Go o d L ord may have fi n ishe d His or Her garden in just si x days, I f u l ly ex p e c t my new fi na l proje c t — wh ich, in t r ut h, is relat ively sma l l — to prov ide ye ars of work a nd rev ision b efore my sou l a nd shovel c a n rest.

No complaint there, mind you. As the Secretar y of the Interior (aka, my wife) can attest, her garden-mad husband enjoys few things more than getting strip -of f-before-you-dare-come-into -this-house dir t y in the great outdoors, possibly because his people were Orange and A lamance count y dir t farmers stretching back to the Ar ticles of Confederation. T heir verdure seems to travel at will through his bloodstream like r unaway wisteria.

Af ter weeks of scheming and dreaming, sketching out elaborate bedding plans and chuck ing them, it finally came together when a dear old f riend f rom Southern Pines named Ma x, renowned for his spectacular camellia gardens, gave me five of his original seedlings for the new garden. I planted them on the borders and remembered something Dame Mirabel said about old souls and trees being memor y-keepers.

Surrounded by Ma x’s grandiflora camellias, this garden will be a tribute to the trees and people I associate them with.

A pair of pink flowering dog woods already anchor a shady corner of the garden where a peony border will pay tribute to the plant-mad woman who taught me to love getting dir t y in a garden, my mom.

Nearby w ill be a pair of flower ing crab apple trees like the pair that bloomed ever y spr ing in Maine, sur rounded by a tr io of Japanese maples that I’ve g row n f rom sprouts, linked by a w inding path of stone.

A fine little American beech already stands at the hear t of this raw new garden, a gif t f rom f riends that recalls the old beech tree that sent me around the world.

For now, this is a good star t. T here will be more to come. For a garden is never really finished, and I’ve only just beg un. OH