e bi pic e Pleasure in the beauty, followed by the drive to do even better, is all part of the rich experience of gardening, writes MICHAEL McCOY If I could afford to get someone to do all the hackwork in my garden, I wouldn’t. I don’t say didn’t really clarify until later, is that, while I was that I love every job that my garden demands able to totally love the result of my efforts, there of me, but I love the physicality of it, and it’s was an undeniable itchiness to make it better still. The grass is magically veil-like and diaphanous, only in doing the work that I get to really know and so much of the joy comes from seeing the my garden. Intimacy and understanding is what surrounding plant colours and forms through I seek, above everything else, and you simply it, enticingly veiled by its semi-transparency. can’t buy that. But there are multiple layers or It’s a bit like how much more mysterious and levels of pleasure in this gardening game, and compelling Hanging Rock (just up the road from I keep discovering new ones. me) looked when they shot it through a piece of Back in late spring (which is always lovely old lace for the opening sequence of Picnic at where I live, but was particularly so this season, Hanging Rock. As it stands, I love the planting with mild temperatures and good rainfall), I stood around my grasses, but I couldn’t help but start in my garden, being slowly engulfed in a rising, to consider how it could be even better. shimmering tide of the best of all ornamental But the specifics of my planting are irrelevant. grasses, Stipa gigantea. The flower stems rise The point is that I was able to feel both hugely high above the foliage, but they start to bloom, satisfied and stimulated to reach higher in the with their curiously bronzy, photon-shattering same moment. I know that you’ve felt exactly flowers, while still at about waist height, and the same. It’s not about being overly critical of quickly ascend until they’re over your head. In your own work (though I certainly can be that). one part of my garden I’m sparsely surrounded It’s about that wonderful aspect of creative by them, and the effect is achingly good. pursuits – that, no matter how far you journey, So I stood there, investing time in harvesting the road still stretches out before you. the pleasures of years of planning and care. How lucky are we to have something that You’d think this would be an obvious and even provides rich satisfaction in the labour itself, inevitable result of several years of nurture, great pleasure in the results of that work, and but it’s not. I have to make time to do it, and the joy and creative drive of dreaming how it’s a bit scary how rarely I manage it. But this much better our creation may yet be? GA time I did, and what I sensed at the time, but Michael blogs at thegardenist.com.au PHOTO ALAMY
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