Natural Magic
6 Somerville Magazine
head gardener Sophie Walwin on how gardens keep us going
Sophie Walwin joined Somerville as Head Gardener in 2019. Writing here after several months of lockdown gardening, Sophie discusses how the endless renewal of gardens brings inspiration in times of hardship, and how a sustainable vision for the Somerville gardens will vouchsafe that inspiration for years to come.
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here was a moment in mid-April when I went back into college for the first time since lockdown. You may remember what the weather was like then: baking skies and streets newly silent. On the news every day were fresh updates about infection rates and harrowing stories from around the world. But alongside all that scared us so much came other reports: of Venetian canals running clear for the first time in living memory and air pollution evaporating over major cities. And then there were the stories of all the inventive things people were doing to occupy themselves – one of which was gardening. Indeed, people were gardening so much that the online stores of all the major garden centres were stripped bare. I stood there in main quad, listening to the song of a waxwing that had taken up residence in a nearby cedar, and wondered what it is about gardens that appeals to us so much in times of trouble. Part of the appeal, surely, is the proximity that gardening brings to continuity, change and renewal – reminding us, just as the clear water of the canals did, that the natural world is still there however bad things may seem. But there is something more to it, I think. Something about the way we participate in the process. The only way I can explain it is by describing how, as I stood there, my mind was already
