Spring-2023

y love for the garden started as soon as I was old enough to gather flowers in my mom’s coun- try yard. It was a glorious mix of camellias, spring bulbs, fruit trees and her magnificent rose garden. Each year I recall going to the park in Sacramento with my mom, who knew exactly when the park garden- ers were going to prune the rose shrubs. She would gather their cast- off cuttings, wrap her finds in news- paper, then take them home to be planted bare root, where they would emerge at spring in a burst of color and fragrance. My happiest memories of my mother are memories of her in her garden.The joy she had nurturing all her collections of rescued plants, hand watering until the sun went down. It was her passion, her therapy and her private space. My grandmother, who lived in San Francisco, had her garden on a rooftop. It was a fascinating theatrical stage of potted flowers I had never seen. My sisters and I had a favorite. It was a fuchsia. My grandma showed us how to make a small hole in the area above the flower, where we would slide a cut stem through, making it look like arms above the flower which resembled a dancers tutu, with the sta- men dangling below like ballerina legs. It was a magical fantasy of ours to be ballerina dancers because of our love for this flower. In his 1755 dictionary, Doctor Samuel Johnson defined a garden as: “A piece of ground, enclosed and cultivated with extraordinary care, planted with herbs or fruit or food, or laid out for pleasure.” The word “garden” comes from the proto-Indo-European word “Ghordos,” meaning an enclosure. And that’s exactly what a garden is. An enclosed private space filled with plants, trees, flowers and garden ornaments and stone animals. Public and private gardens in America probably owe their greatest appreciation to traditional English design. By the early 17th century, ornamentation of British gardens with statuary was being used to cre- ate a marriage between the house and garden. In Asian culture, Feng Shui princi- ples reflect the importance of “place- ment.” Foo Dogs are Chinese pro- tection symbols that “guard” the entrance way to homes. They are always presented in pairs and are traditionally made of stone. I have a vintage pair guarding my front door with their rusty rebar exposing where the stone has broken away over the years. I love that they are not perfect, like all of us. During the pandemic, many of us looked inward and outward at our own homes and gardens for entertainment. Gardening helped people cope and filled their time with a new interest. As celebrities are people too, many evolved from “dancing with the stars” to “gardening with the stars,” debuting their gardening passions on social media. Oprah Winfrey turned 16 acres of her property on the island of Maui 82 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 COLLECTING T E XT AND PHOTOGRA PHY B Y MAR J OR I E S OW Beloved Garden Critters M These old and weathered concrete animals, with all their imperfections and vintage age, add charm to a garden.