Arthur T. Vanderbilt II - Gardening in Eden: The Joys of Planning and Tending a Garden

I WONDER if a high school or college student reading Walden can know what Thoreau meant when he said, I have travelled a good deal in Concord. Im certain I didnt. When were young, the world is elsewhere. Years ago the sons and daughters of the privileged were sent on the Grand Tour, an exploration of the exotic capitals of Europe. Todays Huck Finns, with a backpack and some ingenuity, can find themselves in the most far-flung outposts of the globe.

But somewhere along the way, sometime in our lives, I think we begin to sense that the world is not somewhere else. It is, in fact, in Concord. It is wherever we are.

Indeed, Thoreaus insight has been recognized by some of the greatest travel writers after years of wandering the world. This, wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, is one of the lessons of travelthat some of the strangest races dwell next door to you at home. Paul Theroux noted, I have come to believe that travel is mostly in the mind. The whole point of travel is discovery, and few experiences can match the satisfaction ofan extraordinary discovery near home. For Jan Morris, the truest truths are small ones, to be discovered wherever you are. If I could have my time over again, I think I would choose to roam only my own small patch of countrymy bro, as we say in Wales. Instead of exploring continents and empires, I would investigate ever more intensely our modest fields, hills and villages; rather than wild beasts of Africa, I would watch the herons on the river, the frogs in the pond. Thoreau was right, of course: theres no need for tours and cruises, no need to plan safaris or trips of adventure and discovery. Its all happening right here, right where you are.

Perhaps gardeners become ardent gardeners when they begin to feel this. Im amazed, now, what little regard I gave the property when I moved into my home twenty-five years ago. If the grass was reasonably green and reasonably trim, well, that was pretty much the beginning and end of my thoughts about landscaping. I dont even remember walking around the property much, small as it isless than a half acreand certainly I never ventured into the woodland parcel choked knee-high with weeds and tangled in vines and brambles and briers and poison ivy. I had no grand vision of how landscaping might transform this lot; indeed, I had no vision at all. The extent of my gardening was a burst of enthusiasm each spring when I planted the small terrace garden, then watched in deepening resignation as, by midsummer, the plants and flowers had withered or keeled over, disappeared, become deformed or died.

Now, I have no doubt that a professional landscape architect could have stopped over on a Saturday morning, looked around, sketched out a plan, and a very good one at that, and with the infusion of enough money, the plan could have been well executed within a week or two. But the joy of gardening is in doing it yourself, in devising a plan or parts of a plan, reflecting on it, refining it as you go along, revising it, fine-tuning it, figuring out, season by season, how the pieces fit together, what works well together, what has absolutely no interest in living on your property and what is quite happy there. And in this long process of trial and error, of great plans laid and gone awry, of crushing defeats and tiny victories, a sense of wonder awakens and you begin to realize you are traveling in Concord. Season to season, year by year, grows an amazement, an appreciation, of just how extraordinary is this tiny sliver of the earth and all that is happening on it.

The gardens of which I write are around my home in northern New Jersey, on a fairly typical suburban lot, but could just as easily be in Concord or anywhere. I will say this: my property does have unusual bones. I call them good bones, though others might not be so charitable. Its on the side of a ridge, and with the steep configuration of the land, the neighbors on three sides dont feel close, and on the fourth side, which overlooks a wildlife reservation, the outlook stretches for miles. The rolling topography allows for stone walls and steps and paths that lead to different vistas, elements that may not work as well on a perfectly flat parcel of land. On the other hand, the soil on the ridge is thin and poor, and any hole deep enough to plant a self-respecting perennial necessitates the extraction of rock, and the old oaks dapple the sunlight for most of the day.

But this is what I have and where I garden, and now not a day goes by, early morning, that I dont wander around to see whats happening before I go to work; not an evening, if theres still light, when I dont check to find out what Ive missed. And a weekend when the weather or commitments prevent a good amount of work in the garden feels like a weekend wasted and lost forever.

Is mine an award-winning garden? Pictured in gardening magazines and books? The destination of garden tours? No. Not yet, at least. The more I wander around the gardens, the more new ideas I have, and with each one theres more I want to do. Maybe by next year Ill get it just the way I want it. Or the year after that.

But let me show you around now.

I

D ARK .

Dreary.

January days.

Days of leaden skies, of sleet and snow flurries, day after day, depressing days of winter. Layers of heavy woolen clouds blanket days without sunlight, murky gray days from morning until late afternoon when the gray gets darker.

As the days grow longer, my grandmother used to say, the cold grows stronger. And so it does. Cold gray January days, on and on without end, bleak days, one after another, when juncos seek shelter deep in the old rhododendron outside my kitchen window, huddling among its leaves curled tight as a childs cold fingers inside a mitten, and squirrels stay snuggled in their tree-trunk nests, their tails wrapped around them like winter scarves.