What Do Our Gardens Say About Us?

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
— Alfred Austin

I don’t know enough about the English poet Alfred Austin to understand why he thought he could divine who, or more precisely, “what”, someone was simply by looking at their garden. But he makes an interesting point. Having toured many more gardens than I usually do this summer, I’ve really been struck by the vast differences in the look and feel of people’s yards.

Modern straight lines vs. curving cottage beds, shady oases vs. sun-drenched plots for edibles and brightly colored perennials, cherubs and ornate statuary vs. gnomes and silly flamingos. And probably not surprisingly, a near tie between the number of gardeners who like plant tags and the ability to see the soil  between each plant and those who would never consider plant tags and prefer a more wild, overlapping look.

What would Austin make of this? “What” are these people? Does orderly equal neatnik, control freak or professional organizer while wild signifies some kind of messy, disheveled, devil-may-care personality? Maybe. But that seems too simple since, once you get to know most people, they often turn out to be much more complicated than they first appeared. He must have meant something more. Might we consider how each gardener’s parents and grandparents gardened? Where they grew up? Whether they need to grow food to put food on the table?

I thought about Austin’s assertion a lot while walking through people’s gardens on our local Tangletown Garden Tour last weekend. Probably the biggest thing I kept wondering was this: Why do some gardens feel magical and others don’t? It’s hard to explain, but you know that feeling you get when you walk into someone’s garden and you can sense the love, soul, heart (whatever the right word is) that went into that place’s creation? Some gardens have it and some don’t. Why is that? What is that?

So far, my completely gut reaction is that the magical feeling is stronger in gardens created by people who actually like to hang out in their outdoor spaces rather than just look at them. Spy a sitting area that you’d like to spend time in and you’re likely standing in a magical garden. Just like you can tell when someone serves you a meal that was prepared with love, you can tell when you’re in a garden guided by heart more than head. There, maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to say. Obviously I’m still pondering this.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Here are some photos I took on the tour. See what you make of them. What are these gardeners?