66While watching Monty Don’s
French Gardens one Sunday
afternoon, I was struck by his
description of Claude Monet’s
journey as a gardener: “Monet
found this old cider farm in the
village of Giverny in the spring
of 1883, when he was looking for
a home for his young family. At
the age of 43, he was already an
experienced gardener and was to
spend the remaining 43 years of
his life obsessed by this garden.”
(My mind immediately wanderedherearegardens,andthentherearegardens...
farmsandfarms... nurseriesandnurseries... some
purely pragmatic, some crassly commercial, somemundane and monocropped. And then, there are gardens
and farms and nurseries in which horticulture transcends
the merely functional to become an intricate ecology of
form, interdependence, efficiency and beauty—an ever-
changing kaleidoscope of life—the thinking gardener’s
grail, perhaps?
Brushstrokes of
on
ROSE ROGANBY BETH LISCHERON