LIKE everybody else, I have been tuning into world news this past year with a sinking feeling.
“For many people in urban settings ... gardens are the place where we can be in nature.”
The battle to contain COVID-19 has challenged the world - none more so than the political nay-sayers who have let the disease rip through their population. The result has been enormous suffering, death, separation and place after place going into isolation - often multiple times - in an attempt to contain the spread of the pandemic.
Where I am in Melbourne has essentially been, until a few weeks ago, in shut down since March. The weeks have felt like years. Not allowed to visit family and friends, for many the garden has become even more of a refuge and a solace.
For many people in urban settings – and let’s face it more than half the world now lives in cities – gardens are the place where we can be in nature. Always in a state of growth and transformation, the garden is never finished but in a continual process of unfurling. Cutting back leggy growth to allow lush spring renewal, witnessing the return of plants from their winter dormancy, noticing the eruption of blossom on old cherry trees and the flush of new leaves, tracking the incremental growth of berries and fruit from blossom to harvest - the joys are all simple, yet incredibly moving and profound.
The message I have seen most clearly in the garden during this past year is hope. Spring arrives again, the bees are busy at their work of pollinating, blossoms blaze into glory and a dazzling array of delicious harvest bursting with goodness is ready for the picking.
Out of the global suffering of the past year has come an intense focus on living locally, on gratitude for the plenty we have, on the many joys - and benefits - of living more simply, in tune with the seasons and with nature. Hopefully it does’t take a crisis to keep these lessons close to our heart.
