Borderlands: know your enemy

After years of being deep within the 'land of the sick' I find myself at the border of the 'land of the well'. I venture in and am thrown back out, but I go again and again. I feel like an illegal masquerading as legitimate but in true ' fake it till you make it style' I can feel the change bit by bit. Maybe one day I'll get my Green card.

Borders in gardens at first seem to be flower beds, places for plants but the etymology of the word points toward other origins. Borders are along boundaries, narrow strips, edges; increasingly policed they are central to identity, separating us from them. Garden worthy plants are a distinct group, they are often validated or legitimised  by authority such as the RHS with its AGM (award of garden merit). They too separate the classes and provide rungs in the ladder for the aspirational gardener to climb ever closer to social acceptance.

Borders are there to display the owners taste, to be admired, mostly from within but to allow a glimpse to those on the other side of the border, outsiders. Railway tracks have traditionally made excellent boundaries.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Borders is not what they include but what they exclude; namely Weeds. That weeds are a plant in the wrong place is a truism but misses the point; weeds are them, by virtue of the collective name individuality is lost and they be come a problem to be dealt with, like vermin or the poor etc. Weeds are poisoned and pulled, burned and slashed with a zealous fervour that is evangelical. The only thing worse than a weed in your border is one in your neighbours; eying up the opportunities for rape, pillage and general despoilment of your gentle community.

I have the advantage of working on a large scale, thousands of m2 of herbaceous plantings in 10 acres or so; weeds are free, they grow easily and make bio-mass; weeds are my friends and saviours and when finally in the right place and restrained by the presence of others, useful members of the community. Weeds are the boistrous adolescents, treat them right and they are great fun.

I have Figwort growing up through Hebe, the dull red flowers hovering only inches above the gluacous shrub on vertical stalks 3 foot tall like exotic winged insects. The Hawkweed covers a bank to the main lawn and flowering orange transforms it and illuminates a dull corner. Horseshoe vetch and Birdsfoot trefoil create a bright understory to sparse grass. Sanicle grows as a mat in dry shade and as a unique umbillifer in better corners.

All of these are Arcadian themes, we might think we know our enemy but maybe it is just a stranger from across the tracks.

CONTROL: orange is not just another colour.

ascendancy, authority,, clout, containment, , discipline, domination, dominion, jurisdiction, limitation, management, manipulation,might,  predomination, regimentation, regulation, restraint,restriction, subjection, subordination, superintendence,supervision, supremacy, So many words to say the same thing; just goes to show how much we care about the nature of this relationship. If Eskimo's have a large number of words for snow, the english could describe rain for hours without repeating themselves. When I began to explore organic growing it was as a philosophy as much as practicality and central to this was the relationship with Life. As we act upon the physical world so we shape this relationship, consequences rippling out from the action influencing all that it touches. It's not that I dwell so much at this level when I am working, but that I explored the nature of that place informs the decisions I make. It shapes the movements of my hand as well as the world that I perceive and so the expression of my relationship with life, my 'conversation' with organisms other than myself. Half the time I don't know what I am doing, it is often done before I am aware of the doing, then I explain the action to myself. To work consciously is to over-work the process, to be one with the moment we must act without thought but not thoughtlessly. The action emerges from who we are and is an expression of our deepest nature. We shape and are shaped and what emerges is a result of the process; we shape the process not the result.  Control of oneself, ones desires' is fundamental but it is not at the leading edge, the place where matter is shaped, it is several layers back. The strength of a knife is not at the edge, that mono-molecular transition from metal to air is as fragile as paper. It is the metal behind the edge that exerts control. When travelling fast on a motorbike decisions have to be made in less time than one has available. To survive one must predict the world a few milliseconds ahead in order to act in time to avoid accidents. The cutting edge is not where decisions are made. Defining outcomes is the norm but this can only be an approximation, if we zoom in on anything, description and definition fail as the inherent complexity of the world we seek to describe defeats our efforts; the box we build will never fit perfectly. This can be a real problem if you are a control freak. I have worked for several clients for whom orange was not just another colour, even discussing the colour was enough to begin the unravelling of a psyche teettering on the edge. Knuckles blanch, jaw tightens and the voice looses modulation as ease departs and an authoritarian imperitive drives the exchange. The power imbalance magnifies the anxiety as she struggles to justify a phobia without losing face. I do remember a magnificent large pot of Tiger lillies placed at the bottom of the main steps to the garden, a strong but appropriate planting. " Do you think that looks ok" the boss said " I love it" I replied, he looked down on me, which was an achievement as I was 6 inches taller than him, and with a look one might give pond life and told me he didn't wish to see it again. The colour offended him at a deep level, another garden owner would not have orange anywhere; there is a visceral quality to this dislike and I think it is about control. Colour resonates with our nature and orange is of the solar plexus; fundamental to the exercise of will; for those insecure or feeling challenged this can be too much! Where is the garden we think we are both seeing? is it out there or in here; are we discussing gardens of the mind, do they exist before our perception of them and do we predict what it is that we will experience? I think we would agree upon physical features, more or less on colour but on Meaning? As we dig down through layers of more subtle association and correspondence where does you vision depart from mine. This may seem pedantic but when shaping life the resolution is of quanta, for that is the very stuff of the natural process. No matter how painstaking the design, or careful the execution it is a crude beginning to the process which continues down and down and on and on and out and out beyond perception.  Once released the bubble of mindstuff in which we see ourselves reflected floats on currents too tenuous to support any but he lightest touch; what chance control without destroying the vision contained there? free, free as air; out of harness, independent, at large, loose, scot-free; left alone,left to oneself., in full swing; uncaught, unconstrained, unbuttoned, unconfined,unrestrained, unchecked, unprevented, unhindered, unobstructed, unbound,uncontrolled, untrammeled., unsubject, ungoverned, unenslaved, unenthralled,unchained, unshackled, unfettered, unreined, unbridled, uncurbed, unmuzzled.,unrestricted, unlimited, unconditional; ,unassailed, unforced, uncompelled., unbiassed, spontaneous., free and easy;  at one's ease; degage, quite at home; wanton, rampant, irrepressible..............unvanquished.

It's what I do

I should tell you more about the garden I work in, call it Upton Madjit; no not really; I'm not going to give you the real name as discretion is essential and respectful for although I may have reservations about my employers, they are and I need them to remain that. Like most of these places it has a history, periods of activity and change and long stretches of neglect. Like a microcosm of life it could generally have been done better. Much of the good is lost, the crap seldom succumbs but can support the magically unintended where nature extends a tendril into our consciousness, the spark of recognition a momentary gateway into a world too pure and rarefied to stay long but like the first high, always calling, siren song to leave the mundane and soar amongst the clouds of possibility. Each garden has a 'Genius loci', a unique state of being; seldom tangible this organising principle is the thread that flows through time, a coherence or resonance, a standing wave that draws unto itself. Complete destruction of this level of organisation is possible and is frequently attempted by designers but fortunately due either to lack of skill, understanding, money or commitment it is seldom successful and the genius reasserts itself. As a Mouldewaper I have a commitment to what already is in a place, to the manifestation of the Genius. I shape and shift, I perpetuate rather than curate ( yes I loathe the National Trust whilst giving thanks for it's existence) I create in a dynamic conversation with the life of the place rather than smother the natural rhythm. I am Mouldewaper. The soil here is dry and poor over limestone, seldom more than a couple of foot to brash and as a hilltop garden, drought is a constant. When I arrived at this formerly well planted but not well tended garden the soil was concrete in summer and claggy in winter with a 2 week window for planting in spring. Since our seasons have now gone haywire and we move from wet cold to dry heat in less than a fortnight improving the soil is numero uno. This fits with my organic roots where one feeds the soil rather than the plant but it is slow work. In woodland it is assumed that it takes about a century to build an inch of topsoil. In a decade we have built about 6 inches of topsoil in the 5000 sq m of garden borders that we have. As the old saying goes 'if you'll be wanting to go there, you'd be best not starting from here' so it is with an established garden and all it's problems. Impoverished soil, shallow beds and pernicious weed with trees, shrubs and lawns that prevent radical treatment. How to get to the ideal of weed free and fertile beds growing the choice plants in breathtaking arrangements to demonstrate your mastery of life. Lots of money and disturbance to impose the designers will upon the wayward landscape is the usual way. Poison the weeds, fertilise the soil and buy in lots of plants after the builders have trashed and buried anything that isn't in the plan. The risk of disturbing the delicate balance of the place is large; of burying it for a generation.... real. Mostly of course the Genius will not have been perceived consciously by owner or designer, it may have drawn the new owners to the place or they may not care and are just looking for the designer label. The alternative is not so sexy or quick, it doesn't come with a designer label. It is to work with the land, to intuit the nature of the place and to set about improving, shaping and strengthening what is, so that it may become an expression of the life present there. Mulch isn't sexy but its what happens in woodland, it is the engine that drives growth and diversity, a living mat of microbial activity, the skin of the earth through which it breathes. Why then do most gardeners worship bare soil, the flayed hide of the earth, as if it were only the plants that they had interred that were worthy of life. It is an expression of control and it goes to the heart of why we garden.

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?

I started as an organic gardener before Organic [Tm] Plc was born, before respect for life was hijacked and turned into a commercial vehicle. Before accountants and lawyers and inspectors and bureaucrats sucked it dry; when growing was a joy. We saw it as a transformative process, a spiritual journey for ourselves and all the organisms we influenced. The food that we took from the process was returned, transformed and life was enriched. Ah... the hippy dream, so pure, so doomed. The process is now more mundane, prosaic and necessarily so for in this age of austerity freedom for vegetables can no longer be tolerated. Like a scene from 'Gattica' all seed has to certificated along with composts, feeds, cultivation methods.....the same plant grown from the same seed in the same soil will be considered 'Organic' if in the ground but not if in a pot. I have no guidance as to how large a pot has to be before it is no longer a pot, planet sized? Bureaucatic categories are infinite. You can see the Mouldewaper in me emerging, the iconoclast, unaware of the class boundaries I speak it as I see it. When applying for a job once in Devon I was shown the Garden by the Designer and 'the idiot son' a minor scion of the clan, both nobility; after being shown the accommodation in the village, very nice and with a garden for the children, but totally unfurnished, I was informed that I could live there for 6 months then I would have to move to a small and wind blasted agricultural semi at the top of the hill. When I queried the move asked for more money the response was

for goodness sake what do you expect, you're only a gardener

and of course in their terms this was just a statement of fact; an elucidation of the class difference that existed between us. For me it was the difference between bringing up a family in decent conditions or being reduced to cattle. Respect, an acknowledgement of the right to be differently equal. An old fashioned concept for a time before Thatcher {PMT}. Respect in our modern Britain means 'I have more money than you so I am better than you, I am right and you are wrong'. Respect for life, all life, is pretty central to the Mouldewaper creed; if we have one, because we are all different but for a knowledge known by those that work the land. There is a reality that underpins the social reality of Humans, it is the way that the natural world works, it is harsh, remorseless, cruel and unfair; but it works and has done for millions of years. This reality doesn't care about status, a commoner can grow a better carrot than a lord. So Mouldewapers follow the tradition as did Diggers and Levellers, they have been here for a thousand years and failing the advent of the 'Federation' will be with us for another thousand years.

Just another day with M.E

When the Doc asks you what's wrong and you answer 'It would be quicker to say what's not wrong' then you are in M.E territory. When you feel so ill and have been for so long and still no one believes you, it's as good as a diagnosis; which by and large is not worth the paper it's written on, but Hey. I have worked all through this, over 7 years now and looking back I can't imagine how I did it. If my boss had a Human resources dept I'd be in a gutter somewhere by now but thats the advantage of working in a feudal environment. HR hasn't been invented. Along with computers, labour saving machinery and Human rights! When people realise that I have kept my job through all of this it is not the Hero look that I get, as if I had fought off Cancer, only bettered by an Olympian with cancer, this is the Human equivalent of a big eyed puppy in the AHH stakes (of course Nothing beats an Astronaut} No, the look is one of 'He can't have been that ill' or he'd never have been able to have worked; thus confirming that people who claim to have ME are ya de ya de ya.......and have probably been abducted by aliens as well. How I wish. The truth is that we Humans can put up with almost anything, we struggle on through disaster, war and brutality unimaginable. It may not kill us ( at least not yet) but it damages us, I have become more resilient, but stronger? I have learned to do no more than I have to and to do that with a minimum of fuss. I have lightened the load, if it's not bolted down ,over the side with it. I ask no quarter and I am given none, Sympathy fatigue sets in very fast, about 3 weeks unless you have a visible disability and then not much longer in the brave new world of ATOS and IDS. So I struggle on waking each morning with the wildly unrealistic belief that I don't have an incurable illness, that the next supplement will be the one, that If I just manage it better I will find a way out the other side, that the Psychiatrists are right and my pain and disability are the result of wrong thinking........no that last one is just too outlandish. But that's enough of that, the suns shining I'm going to visit a garden open under the NGS as is my own shortly. Today I triumphed in not only finding the login details but some photo's and after resizing uploading them to the site. This may not seem a big deal but imagine just emerging from the primordial oceans and getting to grips with IT. The cognitive havoc wrought by this disease wipes memory as if it has never happened. No vague remembrance of actions performed, nada, zilch......from scratch everytime; recreating the world from first principles. It is a puzzle, if you related to Memento, your half way there. It would be a good time to turn back. Still ,come and visit me in my very large country garden, spot the mouldewaper; he will not be wearing a carnation or carrying a copy of the Times. He may look surprisingly normal on the outside if a little damp around the edges.

Why would I be going to Chelsea, I'm a gardener

When I was younger, before I became a Mouldewaper, a sort of larval form prior to my metamorphosis I had no Idea about class. I was particularly naive and dense and had a sheltered upbringing. I was an Orc child living on the edge of Mordor where even the birds were black with soot. It wasn't till I moved away to the east that I realised that starlings weren't just black. I saw these new birds with silvery spots and iridescent plumage...a revelation. I had many revelations over the next few years but seemed immune to to the most fundamental ones about my role in this backward feudal state. This was probably due to the influence of the post war socialist experiment, borne out of idealism but also pragmatism, a chance to build a new and modern Britain less in thrall to inherited wealth and privilege. but like trying to graft a fine rose onto an old rootstock, reversion is always the problem. Sadly the new growth needed more tending and firmer training than it got and the weakened growth was no match for the basal growth; easily discerned by its vigorous growth and vicious thorns. So Britian is about Class, what's new; the class system headed up by Queeny is a self renewing hegemony embracing the new wealth, trading Honours for cash. New money will always be looked down on by old but their sons, educated in the right schools( and where is more right than Eton), will be one of us. This elite is now global but Britain is a prime location, safe, loads of culture and a subservient population. Unlike wealth which seems to rush upwards, class does trickle down. Those lower in the social order crave that which is seen to of the upper ranks. Without a strong working class tradition there is no sheet anchor anymore and the scrabble for the symbols of status, more subtle than mere wealth, is ubiquitous. This makes for one of the most dynamic cultures on the planet, perhaps not in gross terms but in the almost infinite subtleties of 'taste'. We have 'taste' gurus telling us what to eat, how to cook, where to shop, how to decorate our house and of course what to put in the garden. And so to The Chelsea Flower Show; The RHS was set by and for the great and the good to display the horticultural fireworks of the victorian/edwardian upper classes whose large estates and gardens were truly awesome. Over the course of two major wars, the loss of empire and devastation of the cultural and biological wealth of a small island the importance of gardens as a cultural niche declined and gardeners were able to get on with their eccentricity largely ignored by everyone else. Then came the eighties and 'Loads o' Money', fortunes made overnight as UK plc was asset stripped, the loss of habitat both cultural and biological was catastrophic for those more specialised creatures but the coarser and more vigorous forms exploded to fill the niche and suck dry the remains of the old. It seemed that everyone and their dog was a garden designer in the nineties seeking out those with new fortunes wishing to display their wealth and taste....their class. Chelsea became the prime target for the commercialisation and exploitation of this forgotten realm and the new money from advertising and media made it their playground as they already had art. Aspirational magazines like Country living began to challenge old stalwarts such as Country life, though not with the old money, and new Garden 'porn' mags popped up like daisies. So Chelsea is about class and status mediated by 'taste' celebs. Plants may serve as the currency but the incestuous social whirl owes more to fashion than to horticulture. This culture is ultimately toxic and anathema to growth. They probably have mouldewaper detectors at the gate just in case these relics of a previous age should be drawn to the plants, mistaking the true nature of the event.

I hurt, therefore I am

I hurt therefore I am; one can tell that Descartes was not in too much pain as he was doing his thinking. Pain defines you, then consumes you till all that is left is a husk. Try walking out on pain and the ground itself is sown with barbs; try throwing yourself through the barrier and you rebound into an altered space, a world of pain where previous concerns vanish beneath a symphony of agony as each cell screams. Is this waterboarding at a cellular level? I practice the silent scream, I may look the same on the outside but inside I'm screaming;I give way to the pressure and allow the pain to scream for me and through me, it doesn't hurt any the less but it relieves the tension of keeping it in, without alarming the neighbours. I try not to use painkillers, mostly they don't work and if they do then I fall asleep, I spend too much time sleeping it's the only time I don't feel pain. In the beginning, when I first got ill I didn't feel much pain but it grew till I was never without it, 24/7, every second and it would follow me into sleep and lead me back out. There came a time when I awoke and lay still I would be pain free; a golden world of ease and peace till I stirred and awoke the Demon within me for that is how it feels, goaded constantly by my hellish companion. There were times when I felt I was losing my mind for how can consciousness coexist with the constant jarring of pain, of needles in the joints, of crushing aches in the muscle. Mostly I practice distraction and boost endorphins; coffee gets me moving, exercise dulls the pain but when the coffee has done all it can and I have to rest so the pain floods in.....and inside I'm screaming. ( thanks Maxijazz).