A window ledge garden

"Erasmus said that a garden should renew the spirit- a need which can apparently arise even when things in general are going well enough: a modern writer on garden design has suggested that 'If a man were in Heaven, he would wall off a portion and design it himself and call it Hell and go and sit in it from time to time just for relief.' Gardens are essentially places where nature is selected and controlled, leading some to see them as symbols of consciousness, as against the wild forests outside the boundary which stand for the unconscious. Gardens have been compared to islands in an ocean. Then again, they are feminine, because they contain: they are a precinct."
taken from Gemma Nesbitt's Garden Graphics

It's befitting for my first Freedonia blog post to include a quote from the book that inspired me to ask Robert if he'd consider creating a garden company. "Let's do it together. It's the perfect thing for us! And we can have something to leave Rowan," I said attempting my most positive and upbeat go get 'em voice while simultaneously anticipating Rob's hem and haw. The book was a gift from our friend, Terry, and could end up being one of the most important gifts Robert and I will ever receive, for, if you haven't figured out by now, he said Yes! Now, this idea of mine to start a garden business is really not a huge surprise to many who know us. Others (including myself) have certainly suggested Robert open just such a company, what with his vast knowledge of plants and his unique design talent and carpentry skills, not to mention he is an experienced and passionate gardener, it's an obvious fit. But, I suppose timing IS everything...

As for myself... I've always had a garden in my life. I would not call my parents gardeners, per say, but my father and mother have always tilled and sown and planted in the small plots suburbs provide. The folks kept a vegetable garden throughout my childhood and in the summer my mother canned and froze and 'put up' the garden's bounty. Like most children fortunate to be born in the time before the fear of our children being stolen, I ran, biked and played outdoors long in to the hour of dusk. The outdoors represented freedom and time to discover oneself. My earliest gardening memory is when I was 5 or 6 years of age, I planted a watermelon patch next to daddy's vegetable rows. I remember my father telling me how to make the soil 'rich' (I have no memory of the little patch producing any fruit, and I imagine I grew bored with the garden after not seeing a seedling push up through the soil with in a few days).

Since moving out of my parents' home, I've moved from apartment to apartment, apartment to house, house to apartment, house to house, and back to 'the apartment'. In my adult life there have been few addresses where I've lived more than a year. The one thing that remains consistent no matter where I dwell is my desire to dig in the earth and plant something or start seeds in the middle of the coldest month (I must admit that sometimes my 'garden' has been nothing more than a few pots on the window sill or outside the pane in long, plastic, rectangular boxes or annuals planted in permanent concrete Italianate planters found as part of the grounds of early twentieth century buildings). I realize most folks don't dig up the front lawn and design and plant a garden in a place where one will never see a financial return, but I feel it's a terrible thing to 'shelf' part of oneself, an essential part, waiting for an event that may never arrive. Besides, as a great woman author once wrote, I believe we are not owners here, we are merely passing through. As anyone that's ever been the 'original' gardener on a plot of land knows, the worst part about this moving around and gardening bit is that it is a laborious, perhaps desperate, effort to dig in where no one has ever envisioned the salty green double serrate leaf of Russian Sage nuzzling the wild scented pineapple sage, or watching the butterfly and bee make a light dance out of capturing pollen on a royally colored butterfly bush or try and catch the sticky tentacle like runners of Creeping Raspberry from running over Thyme.

I did own a house once, and before I moved one item in to the house I was out digging up the front lawn and creating the foundation of my first very own perennial border. I planted various iris tubers that one of the dearest people I know gave to me upon clearing out her front garden that was nothing but irises. I believe she had received these tubers over many years from her mother and maybe a sister and friends that lived in Pennsylvania. She brought them to Georgia with her and enjoyed them for many years, but once she was ready to part with the blooms Monet loved so dearly, she donated them to the gardens of friends, not to the local Goodwill store, as one does a piece of something or other from the interior home. No, she would not have given away her tubers to be sifted through and handled by strangers, because there is something special about giving gifts from one's garden to a fellow gardening friend; it's... personal. Of course, gardens and plants are for sharing and are on display for all those who walk or drive by to enjoy. I kept my friend's tubers for quite a while in a brown paper shopping bag in the cool vestibule of the apartment I lived in prior to purchasing the house, a 1900's bungalow in a slightly less desirable neighborhood. I envisioned a Spring when irises shoot up out of the Earth on either side of the path leading the huge front screened in porch (living in Atlanta, I need a screened in porch to truly enjoy the long summer afternoons or our mosquitoes eat me alive! - and that's no joke with the West Nile horror going around). I lived in the house long enough to see them grow and bloom one season. Now my ex-husband has the good fortune to tend to the rainbow of iris; even though my ex did get to keep the irises,a he must also look upon the arbor I hired Robert to build while I lived in the house. The arbor has a most lovely gate that Robert specially designed for that arbor. There is a large grid like pattern in the center of the gate but instead of straight lines, he cut the wood curvy. It's beautiful and is perfect for the property.

After moving out of my house, I found a wonderful garden world to belong to at what would soon be called Camp Freedonia. Robert and his mother had already established the garden but I cleared an area for the vegetable garden and helped clear and add to the hut's garden area.

And so, here I am. After years of working in the interior design and custom flooring business, starting a garden design business. I always enjoyed the design end of my work and communicating with my loyal clients, but I could never figure out why I felt like a round peg pushed into a square hole. Of course, now it's obvious; I was longing to be in the garden. I believe when someone finds oneself in something, something that makes one feel extraordinary, one must do that thing, be in that place as soon as possible. For me that place is the garden.