Moving My Mother: From Eccentric House To Retirement Village, Part Three, The Garden

Moving My Mother: From Eccentric House To Retirement Village, Part Three, The Garden

If you have been following this story then you will know that my mother was not the average suburban housewife. She was well educated, a teacher, a seeker of knowledge and a child of nature. She had always lived in slightly peculiar houses, in slightly peculiar places and certainly maintained them in a slightly peculiar way.

The gardens she liked were wild, like a hedgerow in England. There were always herbs of every type; marjoram, oregano, sage, rosemary and medicinal herbs like feverfew and Balm of Gilead. These grew in profusion amongst a vibrant clutter of roses, daisies and other cottage flowers.

My mother’s garden, like the inside of her house was an eccentric collection of bits and pieces collected over many years. Often as a child travelling in the car you would be thrown against your seat belt as she would slam on the brakes and launch herself onto the grass verge. She would identify the interesting plant and then pull from the trunk of the car plastic bags, old containers, gloves, a trowel and a bottle of water. We would wait patiently while she lifted a plant from the soil and gently place it a plastic bag, then into a container and finally tip a little water on the plant to keep it alive until we got home. On hot days she would place the plant in a cooler. More than anything she hated a plant to suffer or to die. She would immediately find a place in the garden to put the pilfered plant. It was always the perfect spot and she would tend it carefully until, like a miracle, it would grow and bloom and spread.

No one really appreciated my mother’s gardening style except her family. It was lovely to grow up playing in her crazy wilderness. To make houses in the bushes and chase through the overgrown paths was one of the simple pleasures of childhood. The neighbours just saw the garden as unkempt. It was always the messiest in the street. They could not feel the vibrant growth, the happy plants and the pleasure of the garden’s creator. The plants were never forced into neat rows. Her garden was a creative jungle of very happy plants.

When it came time to move house, preparations began months earlier to move the garden. Each time my mother moved house the garden went with her, hundreds of pots were filled, plants removed, cuttings taken, polystyrene apple boxes lined with newspaper and filled with bulbs and sometimes entire bushes excavated. Like the things inside the house that she could not bear to let go, she collected and kept her plants.

The last two homes she had she found it hard to transplant everything, they were rental properties anyway and she did not want to “give