You can’t stop weaving dreams…
That’s British gardening guru, Monty Don, writing about his garden1. And he’s right, of course: we were dream weavers. Long before we owned The Brow, we’d dreamed of a serious garden some day…
Once there, from Day One, we’d walk the paddocks, weaving. Dreams of establishing a native plant nursery, from which we’d plant the waterways and river bank; dreams we’d create sinuous, sensuous walking trails for ourselves and our guests; who’d be accommodated in our revitalised, luxurious (but still authentically rustic), two-bed, two-ensuite, woolshed, (private access, river views, check the thread count!); weaving dreams of an apparently endless, glorious, garden around the house; an abundant potager; fruitful orchard; chic ride-on mowers (his-and-hers, bien sûr); a cute little tractor scurrying about, with bucketloads of mulch, as well as rich compost from our own-made inexhaustible supply (impressive bins!); our sweeping lawns; our magnificent trees.
Conceptually, concentric circles: house, garden, park, farm.
At Versailles—the most extensive gardens the Western world has ever seen2—Louis XIV had the same concept: the Palace, the Petit Parc, and the Grand Parc. A few thousand acres bigger than our place, maybe, but—you know—similar. As French President Emmanuel Macron put it ( a few hundred years later):
We need people who dream impossible things, who maybe fail, sometimes succeed, but in any case who have that ambition.
We’d not been at The Brow long when the Mangaonuku—our placid, picturesque little trout stream— flooded: a raging torrent. The bridge closed. Our bottom paddocks under water. Fences, left strewn—woven—with flotsam.
In 1709, the cold was so severe the Seine froze. At Versailles, the gardens perished. The trees died in great number. It is impossible to imagine the desolation of this general ruin3.
What’s that quote about God laughs at our plans? Or the one about the higher we fly the further we fall? Gardening is a collaboration with Nature. Nature, meet Ambition. And yet Nature will always deny having been at the meeting and she always goes her own way. It’s a tempestuous relationship that sometimes creates great music, but heartbreak, too. Stevie Nicks:
Now here I go again. I see the crystal visions4
The irony of Versailles is that despite Louis’s wealth—his apparently unlimited resources—even he wove dreams, crystal visions, beyond his reach: despite an entire army on the project, he never could get enough water to keep all those freakin’ fountains spouting simultaneously.
We wove dreams. We wrestled with Nature. We failed sometimes. But succeeded some times too. Just like Louis, we had an impossible dream and never quite reached the hem of it.
But they were wonderful dreams.
And glimpses of them came to be.
In his book The Ivington Diaries.
Ian Thompson, The Sun King’s Garden
ibid
Fleetwood Mac. Dreams
For we lucky visitors, I think your dream came true and how privileged we were to experience it.
And it’s just a glimpse we needed to weave on ….