Gardening is a state of mind.

There are two sorts of people in this world; gardeners and the lost. The lost are the sort of people that come with built-in lifestyle clichés and sleazy TV shows attached. They can therefore be enthusiastically ignored. The question is,

ARE YOU A GARDENER?

You may agree to any or all answers.

Do you always water the kids and mulch the spouse before going to bed?

1. Yes.

2. Sorry, I have to breastfeed the Pittosporum.

3. No, the Agapanthus usually does that.

4. Bed?

Do you sometimes forget to fertilize the neighbors?

1. Never.

2. I think I overdid it.

3. I prefer organic, free range, neighbors.

4. Neighbors?

Is the ferny water feature in your office starting to attract adverse comment?

1. There does seem to be an issue about seasonal flooding.

2. The hydroelectric plant is paying for my geraniums.

3. The main problem is landslides.

4. It’s an anti-erosion measure.

Have the people at the local nursery developed a sudden profound interest in the afterlife?

1. Yes.

2. Yes, but perhaps not their own afterlife.

3. Do people have to pray when I buy petunias?

4. Well, the cash register receipt does say, “Repent Now!”… although that’s after tax, I notice.

Have foreign governments expressed concern at the expansion of your rockery?

1. Yes, but you’d think they’d appreciate a distraction.

2. The Swiss have. Apparently their Alps are jealous.

3. So a few alyssums got a bit frisky.

4. Well, who needed the Indian Ocean anyway?

What is your understanding of the description “jungle”?

1. That place my partner lives in.

2. I can’t answer that one, because the kudzu has taken out an injunction. Also several villages.

3. A jungle is that part of the bedroom where the rainforest is.

4. According to the maidenhair and the crocodiles, it’s the bathroom.

Indoor gardening is:

1. An excuse to put the Sahara to shame.

2. A refreshing way of preventing the indoors.

3. Difficult, because the ferns prefer political documentaries.

4. Eventually, a way of providing new furniture.

People are:

1. Difficult to transplant.

2. Usually better in hanging baskets.

3. Things with inadequate foliage.

4. So-so as compost.

Other gardeners are:

1. Territorial rivals; I train my geraniums to hunt them down.

2. Pleasantly avoidable.

3. Valuable allies in one’s effort’s to hide/destroy civilization.

4. Preferably sexy.

Pruning requires what skills?

1. Abstinence, or non-secateur.

2. The ability to enter the garden.

3. No skills, just the lust to kill.

4. A degree in astronomy, infinite patience with textbooks, and a lack of morals.

Vegetable gardens are:

1. Places where carrots can laugh at you.

2. Terrible wastelands full of anarchic beetroot.

3. The domain of Parsnip Warlords.

4. The reason I’m now largely carnivorous.

Garden games are popular. Which do you prefer?

1. That one where you have to try and find the house.

2. Golden Poker.

3. Hide and Leek.

4. Pumpkin Racing.

Your friends (you remember them) think of your garden as:

1. The main reason they don’t have to worry about your funeral expenses.

2. A useful place to lose Great-Aunt Hermantrude.

3. Interesting, because you seem to be alive, in some way.

4. Dangerous, because of the nasturtiums.

Your friends wish you had a garden because:

1. They think the dog looks slightly over-planted.

2. The Atlas Spruce trees don’t go with the furniture in your bed sit.

3. You keep grafting things onto the car.

4. You keep getting arrested for trying to grow radishes in pedestrians.

Score 1 for each answer numbered 1, 2 for 2, etc. Maximum possible score is 140. If you scored above this number, congratulations, but your calculator doesn’t work. If you scored below zero, may I suggest immediate taxidermy, before anyone suspects.

0-20

Your role in the garden is likely to be passive, if nutritious.

21-50

That Kentia palm had friends, you know. Powerful friends.

51-70

Make up your mind. The celery will leave you, if you can’t be more decisive.

71-100

Don’t turn in the watering can just yet. You may be able to perform some useful task, like being a mobile vase.

101-120

Much better. Nobody ever knew about that agapanthus, did they? The fools. They never suspect the gardener.

121-140

Well done. You may not be a member of the human race any more, but you didn’t ask to join anyway.

DEFINE A GARDEN

Gardening is a very personal thing, like breathing. It’s normal to refer to gardening as though it was entirely objective, but it’s really a very subjective process. What you feel is important. It’s also complex. What a garden means to you isn’t necessarily something you can put into words.

Most people first encounter a garden in the vast impossible spaces of very early childhood. A world of new things, and a corresponding lack of information about what most of them are. Most of the things are bigger than you are, and don’t seem to be wearing nappies. There also seems to be a lot more wind, rain, sunlight and noise than indoors. You are told that some things are flowers, some are trees, some are dogs, cats, lizards, ants, butterflies…neighbors…all of which are forever associated with The Outside.

My reference dictionary, which has its optimistic moments, defines a garden as a place where plants are grown, usually with a lawn, next to a private residence. I don’t want to hurt its feelings, but a more comprehensive description would be a location comprised of living things, natural and/or planted. The garden is a combination of life, and is able to exist without lawns, private residences, or dictionaries. However, there is a terrible inference in that description. I think the reference book is heroically trying to shield its readers from the awful suspicion that there are such things as gardeners, by using the passive sense, “where plants are grown”.

This is an understandably cautious way of dealing with the fact that gardens are deliberately, in fact ruthlessly, grown by people. This is made clear to you by the apparently endless potterings of parents and other fixtures as they scuttle about digging, weeding, crooning, foaming at the mouth, and biting neighbors. The soft rattle of the seed packet is heard at all hours in all weathers. The stealthy slide of the seedling punnet, the quiet cough of the spade, and the thud of the planter form a soundtrack to this parental epic. Dramatic scenes unfold as snails arrive in tour buses to inspect the new plantings.

Now nearly taller than some of the geraniums, you wander through this carefully-edged landscape in search of something. The puppy, equally intrigued, comes along, as does the kitten, who has escaped from the basket again. As role models they are fun but confusing. The puppy sniffs about at everything, and the kitten stalks everything.

You, unwisely not being either a puppy or a kitten, (better luck next time) tend to fall over everything or bump into it, and learn a lot from direct contact. A garden can define itself well by allowing you to crash into bits of it. You are following in the footsteps of humanity since it began, bumping into reality until you understand it. It’s an informative process, if messy. The taste of a dandelion and the impact of a rose thorn soon persuade you that some risk assessment is required. The puppy and the kitten have had their adventures, too, and the party retires to dinner somewhat in need of a wash. Further learning, in the form of the kitten discovering it can’t fly after the bee, and the puppy getting stuck in the bamboo somehow, adds to the store of knowledge. Bit by bit the garden is clarifying itself.

The senses are all getting quite a workout. Smell is the oldest sense, and the memory of garden smells is indelible. You may have no idea what the smell is, or the plant that makes it, but you will remember it. Smell seems to be everywhere in the garden. You are informed that this is to attract bees, which of course explains everything.

Color is another major factor. Most flowers are made to dazzle, and human beings, even if color blind, are very receptive to tones and light. You, as a child, receive this blast of light without filtering. Adults say things like “lovely colors”, but you are receiving the entire unadorned view without the benefit of adjectives, or other qualifiers, and that’s closer to the truth. Beauty doesn’t need explanations.

This leads to another notable fact about gardens and the Outside. They don’t talk baby talk. The inscrutable rose seems friendly enough, despite the thorns, but it also doesn’t seem to feel any need to introduce itself like everyone else does. The gardenia will sit patiently, its flowers producing an immortal white, but this is also apparently normal, requiring no comments. At least it’s not dumbing everything down at you and talking your ears off with babble. You learn to appreciate that.

Confronted with the not-very explicable, the human being cowardly resorts to words. Description of a garden is a very mixed blessing, particularly if you’re looking for information. A word like “rose”, if abstracted, tends to divert attention from the actual rose to the description. “A nice rose bed” says very little if you’re not actually looking at it. More or less eloquence simply equates to a degree of abstraction and distraction.

You, the kid, don’t have any such vocabulary when you first meet a rose. The incredible deep velvety red is quite new to you, and you certainly weren’t thinking “rose” while you were first looking at it. Definitions of gardens are about as accurate as those of people. Less obvious is that the word “garden” by now has a personal meaning. This will be the excuse for your terrible excesses in later life. Led astray by the puppy and the kitten, who seem to know fun when they see it, you notice there’s more to gardens than just decoration.

This is the beginning of your evolution into a gardener. From an inquisitive infant to a muddy but cheerful nonagenarian is just a step. All you have to do is point yourself in that direction.

Symptoms of gardening tendencies are numerous:

1. Refusal to be bored to death.

2. Strange lack of interest in a life of spectator-hood.

3. Deliberate, undisguised, shameless, enjoyment of one’s own home.

4. Systematic avoidance of lifeless people and cultural crud.

5. Chronic disbelief/derision in the presence of such mighty beings as interior decorators and real estate agents.

6. Frequent necessity to use heavy lifting equipment to remove patient from Chinese gardens, Botanic gardens, Floriades, friends’ cherry tree, etc.

7. Consorting with disreputable puppies and kittens.

There is no cure.

EARLY GARDENING

Due to that indulgent instinct that seems to overcome parents and other masochists, you have been allowed to plant a few things of your own. The fact that the now slightly larger puppy (full grown but still a confirmed puppy, like most of them, given a chance) has opened up some significant space for this extravagance is quite accidental.

The work force, consisting of self, Diligent Dog and overseen by Coordinator Cat, who seems pretty good at forward planning, arrives armed with some seedlings, bulbs, a few cheerful, familiar, reassuring old digging tools, and a watering can. The area is carefully surveyed by dog and cat, evidently determined to be thorough. You have some vague idea of planting things, but apparently it’s not as simple as that.

Bulbs are planted but evidently the dog doesn’t agree. The cat has meanwhile decided to play with the seedlings, to make sure they understand their role in the garden. A conference is held with the staff, who react well to some games, and much fussing over them. Eventually an understanding is reached that the plants are to be allowed to grow. This is done by earnest debate, bribery, training, much affection, and the vague, pitiful, desire of your parents to lead normal lives. There have naturally been some modifications to the plan. A large catnip/catmint patch has materialized, as has a peace treaty on the burying of bones. Some rolls of chicken wire grace the garden bed around some of the more terrified plants. Later you will realize that the black market in catnip and bones is extensive, and that there is no such thing as a dumb animal.

Watching the progress of the plants it soon becomes clear that the others have their views on gardens. So do birds and insects. In your later plantings the tomatoes have been overwhelmed with praise and whitefly. Fiercely doing battle, you enquire of the other partners why they don’t seem to be interested in these matters.

The reply is informative, and debate generally runs thus:

“Well, you see, we dogs and cats have to be careful. Recent studies indicate that we could overplay our roles and damage the local ecology. We have to be conscious of public opinion, for your sake.”

“I see.”

This is not an argument you can win. The labor force is now you. The others still oversight your work and are prepared to offer suggestions, usually by jumping on top of you. In fairness, dog and/or cat-wearing does add some life to the gardening sartoriale, never goes out of fashion, and certainly entertains the family and neighbors.

The views of dogs and cats on gardening procedures are worthy of study by some advanced institution. Mulching with compost, for example:

Dog: Why are you putting all that soil on top of all that other soil?

Self: To make more soil. I mean to make more food for the plants. I mean…

Cat: Cunning, these humans. It’s almost as if they know, somehow…

Dog: We should try that. Much easier to bury things; just bring the soil to the bone.

Cat: Begs the question of why they dig things up in the first place, though. If they insist on growing these things, why do they spend days digging up hard soil, when they have this nice soft stuff they can use? They use it in the pots, too.

Dog: It builds character.

Cat: Ah. You mean, in case they need some?

Dog: Quite.

Self: “Aren’t…(gasp)…you two layabouts…(pant)…going to do anything…? (Wheeze). …but… (sweat, wipe)…sit about gossiping?”

Dog/Cat: “Probably not.”

You then show your disapproval of their casual approach by going and getting them some water, some food, perhaps a sofa or so…a piano…. In your dealings with dogs and