My Garden Dreams

I´ve never had a garden before. I always lived in rental properties which had minimilistic gardens. My life was always too busy (or I was too busy sleeping off hangovers and late nights). I always liked the idea of a garden, I just never had one.

Now I live in our own house with a big back yard. Now I live in the country. A garden is compulsory in post war Austria. A garden must consist of neat boarders, with lots of flowers and a space for a vegetable patch. A garden must be worked at compulsively. A garden is considered hard work. This is not my dream garden.

I want a garden with smells. I want the smells of lavender, roses, lemons, rosemary, mint. I want a garden that I can taste. I want my girls to be able to wonder and smell and eat what they touch. I want a garden where herbs are intertwined with roses. I want curves and rambling. I want butterflies and bees. I want wild flowers growing in the lawn. I want zuccinis growing in this corner, and pumpkins in that. I want a garden to enjoy, not to spend all my time working on. I want rows and rows of lavender plants. I want Tuscany and Provence. I want art. I want sculptures. I want my 2 metre Ned Kelly mail box. Now I just need to make it happen.

My husband thinks I am being unrealistic. He is from the school of hard work and conservatism (just don´t tell him that). He doesn´t believe me when I say that I will make him a garden he won´t need to mow. He thinks that creating a mini-Provence with rows of lavender will be more work than I think. He thinks that my garden ideas are messy and unorganised (well maybe but that is what I like). He is traditional and belives that herbs should belong in a herb garden. With a little snail shape. Like everyone else has....... 'isn´t it so pretty' You can´t make a garden by just planting things and seeing what happens. Everything has to be planned and thought through. Make a plan I can see. You can´t just let the vines grow out everywhere. How else am I going to mow around it? We need a lawn. We need square things. We need definitive garden spaces. We now have separate areas where we each can have our own garden ideas.

I love working in the garden. There is something uplifting watching something grow. To eat something that I planted. To know that I made it happen. I must admit that I don´t have a green thumb or any green part in my body. But I seem to be lucky as things tend to grow (if not, just add more seeds). One of the advantages of living in Austria is that it rains enough to compensate for my lack of watering or looking after the plants. I can pretend that I am a gardener without really having to do too much work or having much knowledge about how to grow things properly. Of course my mother-in-law is horrified. 'That´s not how you do things!!!!' No. But that is the way that I do things.

Now the sun is coming out, I love sitting in the garden and dreaming about what I will do. I will build a rose thing over the gate. You know, those round things, and cover it with roses. The ones that climb. And over there I´m going to get that bushy plant with the white pom pom flowers. And next to the drive way I want one of those popcorn looking trees. And at the bottom of the garden I want a fence of those smelly, climbing flowers that will cover it and waft that sensual duft towards me. And I want my lavender rows to curve round and round like a snail (see I have a snail in my garden too). I want a space where I can just sit and enjoy it all. Maybe here under the apple blossoms. And then maybe behind I will make a vegetable garden. With raised beds and order. This is where my husband can help me.