In the last of her regular columns, Alice Vincent reflects on what she\u2019s discovered over the course of documenting her gardening year, and why it\u2019s now time to move on. Illustration Alice Pattullo. <\/p>
I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about the passage of time lately. I\u2019ve spent the past year almost entirely in the company of a baby. He turned up on the spring<\/a> equinox, and since then I\u2019ve marked the changing seasons with other milestones \u2013 first solid food, standing up and sleeping through the night. Time has shrunk (nothing moves as slowly as the minutes before bedtime with a teething baby on a miserable winter<\/a> afternoon) and it has telescoped (where did that tiny newborn go?). <\/p> The seasons have always kept me tethered during eventful parts of my life; when things feel strange or unwieldy, the predictability of winter following autumn<\/a> following summer has been a vital metronome. Everything has its season, from sweet peas<\/a> to sleep regressions. Things come to an end and open up space for something new to unfold.\u00a0<\/p> “The seasons have always kept me tethered during eventful parts of my life.”<\/p><\/blockquote> And so it is with my borrowing of this column, which \u2013 like a good garden \u2013 was only ever mine to look after for a little while. The time has come for me to hand back the keys and let something else grow in this plot instead. I\u2019ve adored it, writing these letters to you every month. We\u2019ve been through a lot, haven\u2019t we? Droughts<\/a> and floods<\/a>, trees<\/a> and tulips<\/a>, gentle realisations about what makes us happy when we grow it. There\u2019s been a garden overhaul, a posh shed<\/a> to write in and fights with squirrels<\/a>. There\u2019s been a wedding<\/a>. There\u2019s been a baby.\u00a0<\/p> I\u2019ve loved hearing from you, too. Thank you for coming and saying hello at events, for writing to me about your gardens. My writing and gardening are similarly solitary pursuits; these sparks of connection are a magical thing. It feels fitting to move on with the spring ahead. It smells different in the garden now; the ripe, fresh smell of soft moss and rising sap. The days are longer and I can grab sunlight for myself before anyone else wakes up. Things are growing. I\u2019m reclaiming the little inspections around the garden that used to mark the beginning of my days. <\/p> “It smells different in the garden now; the ripe, fresh smell of soft moss and rising sap.”<\/p><\/blockquote> This time last year, the garden was a quagmire; now it is emerging into its first perennial spring. I wonder what that will hold, and I know that among the disappointments (how did the snails annihilate quite so many new plants?) there will be surprises I could never have imagined.\u00a0<\/p> One of the ironies of writing about gardening is that it takes up the time to actually garden. The past few years have been ones of upheaval, not just inside these garden walls but for all of us. Among my book deadlines and the towering word counts and the night feeds, I\u2019ve struggled to ground myself among the plants in quite the same way. But they\u2019ve been patient \u2013 far more so than I have \u2013 and waited for me. In stepping back, the garden has found a rhythm I\u2019m keen to tune back into.\u00a0<\/p> “One of the ironies of writing about gardening is that it takes up the time to actually garden.”<\/p><\/blockquote> I believe our gardens reflect the people we are when we tend to them. My first column reflected upon the first year in this, my first proper garden. That summer was a good one: from a scrap of lawn<\/a> I\u2019d managed to conjure a riot of flowerbeds, swollen with flowering fennel, fireworks of dahlias<\/a> and the sharp pop of hazy blue echinops<\/a>. We strung up bunting<\/a> and lights<\/a> and threw a riotous engagement party there. I ate plums from the tree. <\/p> It\u2019s telling that it\u2019s changed every year since: a dry, punishing summer that forced me to rethink the garden; a first with a baby, gathering people into an arbour we raised and painted when he was a few weeks old. This year we\u2019ll mark our fourth summer here. I know that I\u2019m a different person from the woman who christened the soil by swigging champagne<\/a> from a bottle, but I\u2019m not sure what lies ahead. A garden less keen to prove itself? A garden that\u2019s better for sitting in. I have a hunch that the roses<\/a> will be good this summer. A fine time, really, to smell them.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n In the last of her regular columns, Alice Vincent reflects on what she\u2019s discovered over the course of documenting her gardening year, and why it\u2019s now time to move on. 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