Even if your garden is depressingly overgrown, the lawn unkempt, and you feel it is hopeless, if you look out at your garden now there are already two beautiful things: shape and texture. Focus your eyes on the leaves of a tree or plant near the window and see what shape they are, long, pointed and curved like an arch, or perhaps small smooth and oval. Notice the plant is vibrant with energy as it holds its leaves towards the light, or shifts slightly in the breeze. Now move your eyes a little along the border and look at another plant and notice how its shape and its leaves differ, perhaps they are larger and jagged edged, or divided into three or more segments.
Suddenly something else in the garden catches your eye; the rugged bark of a tree with a twisted old trunk, or a blackbird exploring the lawn, but for the present, just notice the leaves of the shrubs. If you look at the first plant again you can register the colour of the leaves, dark or light, matt or shinny, marked with a little brown or red. Then turn to the second plant and see how it contrasts with the first; how many different greens there are, even in a small garden!
Even if you only see some brambles and a few overgrown plants, you can see the bursting life in them, and the contrast of the shapes of the leaves, and of the plants themselves, is exhilarating, yet somehow also calming: as this great natural symphony draws us in, our burdens and worries fall away.
Looking at the leaves closely has already made your fingers itch with the different textures;- thin, soft and smooth like a yellow-green young beach leaf, or veined, ribbed and tough and a mysterious dark green; here the knurled hard trunk, with cracks as wide as a finger, and there a sleek silvery stem with a gentle curve. Perhaps you can feel the weight of raindrops bowing the plants down, or the brittle edges of a dried out leaf in late summer, even through the barrier of the window.
It is my mission to reveal to people what they have already: a very small expenditure on garden maintenance will enhance what is already directly outside your window; the contrast of a mown and neatly edged lawn with the plants around it will amaze you, particularly when weeds are cleared away, overgrown plants sorted out and, if necessary, a little more light let into your house and garden by careful pruning.
If people have the energy to grow annual flowers and vegetables, or the time to water them during a long hot summer, good luck to them. But, for the rest of us, a little expense and attention, can expose a wonderful natural world of shape and contrast, that is there already, waiting to be revealed.
Call me and let me show you how your garden can be a pleasure and not a burden; a free gift, something God given if you will, that will brighten your day. In a few hours you can look out with pleasure, at an asset that you mistook for a problem.
