C-O-D-E-R-E-D

I have to admit, my landscape is not well defined but definitely what experts call “low-envy” I wish I could have tall stalks of hollyhocks frolicking alongside fences, aroma-rich sweet peas, and stately sunflowers nodding in the breeze. Instead, a scraggly juniper tree bears tiny pale blue berries in the fall. Miniature fir trees sit primly in Terra-cot ta-turned-white pots. The trees are disheveled odd shapes. My backyard blueprint does not involve innovative ideas or exquisitely detailed plans. Visual accents of the artificial kind are not my cup of tea. I am shaping a context for a personal experience in the wild, adopting Thoreau’s philosophy, for I also believe that “in wildness is the preservation of the world,” or at least the preservation of my particular soul.

Taking this one step further John O’ Donohue, author of Annam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, says, “The landscape has a huge influence on shaping the rhythm of mind and perception. Celtic spirituality had a recognition of nature as the theater of divine presence … [it was] where divine presence articulated its imagination.”
In landscape, and in shaping the landscape of our homes or our lives, we have opportunity to express ourselves as made in God’s image, to articulate our imagination. There seems to be no limit to the gardens we may create: container gardens, rock gardens, kitchen gardens, children’s fairy gardens, shade gardens, organic gardens, and so on. Whatever we call it, a well-defined landscape can feed the soul as surely as it can add curb appeal—and, my Realtor tells me, 15 percent to the selling price of a home.

Artful attention and arrangement on the grounds of your home, the balcony of your apartment, or the window box outside your rented room can make your space a mini Eden. You may go for the opulent, the exotic, and the tamed, or you may follow a wiser path to paradise. Using plants appropriate for your climate,
you may go low maintenance. But that needn’t mean boring or plain. When you imitate the natural landscape on your grounds, you’re going for the greater aesthetic.
Celts of the fifth century brought their love of nature and their awareness of the sacred into Christianity when they converted, says Bob Abernathy. They were fierce warriors who lived simple lives and valued the hushed, brooding landscape.2

Hang on. Hold out. Endure. What does survive is precious. Beauty is in the discernment of the delicate scents in different kinds of sage or the mute tones of trees where wildlife hides. Lack of moisture in the sky creates clarity just like lack of distractions creates transparency of soul. I think of Moses, prince of Egypt, living forty years in the desert, growing tough and sinewy herding animals from place to place. Might he have wondered if he’d missed his life’s calling because of mistakes made in his youth? We only know that when one day he saw the burning bush and heard the voice of God, he was an old man shaped by the wilderness. God found him where he was and called it holy ground.
Indeed, landscape tells a story.

So, yes, “natural” reigns in my yard; I’ve given myself permission to be free-form and messy. The landscape’s rocky, volcanic soil is an extension of the lava beds just ten miles away. It doesn’t hold moisture well, but the muted desert colors—tan, sage, and mossy brown—have their own kind of glamor for those who have eyes to see. Though I miss the varied elegant greens of a wetter climate, life abounds anyway under crystal-starred nights, the clean rush of myriad rivers, and the red porous earth.
I take landscape tips from my ninety-three-year-old neighbor who has weathered many days here and come up thriving. Marguerite’s yard includes plants with names like “sweep the sky,” which are lush with yellow blossoms in June. Her “tiny rubies” ground cover, when in full bloom, looks like drops of sparkling blood.
Ms. M. has spent years arranging flagstone in straight up and down patterns, like canyon walls, creating a rugged effect that imitates Native American geography on the reservation just east. She has hauled down mountain driftwood, carved by eons of wind and parched white as if by the ocean, from hikes along local glaciers. The enigmatic shape of her landscape accentuates the high-desert, high-flying appeal of her home.

Do you live in a manicured neighborhood or along a rambling country road? Are you blessed with lush and fertile soil, or do you have to haul it in? What are your favorite flowers? Colors? Scents? Everyone would like profuse blossoms, but sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is possible for you? How will your garden tell your story?
An old wire chair seat brimming with hanging flowers is part of my friend Jane’s landscape appeal. She has also been known to hang an antique candelabra in a tree for a cozy summer supper.

What stories will your landscape tell? They are not all sweet or pretty, roses and lavender. I planted a hawthorn tree in front of my house to celebrate my new life as a single woman. Not long afterward it died. The Chinese plum tree planted by my ex thrived, of course, even though it was never watered. I like this story that until now only my landscape knew. The landscapes of our lives are full of mysterious paradox, perplexing puzzles, and peculiar people. They remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. They teach us to pause just to wonder. The landscape is what it is. Our story evolves from moving through it.
“Gardens slow things down,” writes Dominique Browning. She knows they help us tell our stories. “I want simply to teach my children to see the roses,” she adds. “One day they will know enough to stop and smell them, too.”

Our friend Richard built an alpine creek bed through and around a mound of soil planted with young aspens, then sent water tumbling down the river rocks with an underground pump. The scenic area,
a mosaic of sun-dappled foliage, attracts birds and, unfortunately, also many flower-hungry deer.

The summer I had a large strawberry patch was one of the happiest times of my life. My toddler “worked” beside me, both of us on hands and knees. I was glad when one-year-old Terza learned that those red squishy shapes tasted good. She quit picking the plants by their roots and plucking off the green fruit. I let her eat her fill until she fell asleep in the grass. Her exhausted sleeping form—back lit by the sun, which shone through a mop of curls—was an icon of that holy place and time. Within a twinkling, it seemed, she was eight and had been joined by two sisters. Still, Terza led the entrepreneurial effort to pick lemons and limes from our backyard trees and sell them on the street (“Five cents, please”), and a pitcher of homemade lemon-limeade was her idea. Little did it matter to me that the sugar and the paper cups cost far more than would be earned. The pleasure on three cherub faces was my contribution to the world that day. This was the true landscape of my life, sweeter than the scent of the roses along the neighbor’s front porch.
Some things we do not produce by conscious effort or design. We simply take our chances, and in brief moments of time, they become the most beautiful art of our lives. It is the human touch, the green thumb, the weathered prayers that fertilize seed.
These gardens start with the landscape you have been given and by letting the story tell itself.

Some things we do not produce by conscious effort or design. We simply take our chances, and in brief moments of time, they become the most beautiful art of our lives. It is the human touch, the green thumb, the weathered prayers that fertilize seed.
These gardens start with the landscape you have been given and by letting the story tell itself.
the munching invaders from his landscape becomes simply another part of participating in the landscape of life.
“We are never nowhere,” explains Kevin Sharpe, a professor at Union Institute. “From our first environment in our mother’s wombs to the last breath we take, we continually interact with the world around us.”