Mark Penfold

Introduction.

Gardening is my lifelong hobby. Dirt first slipped under my fingernails when mum and dad trusted me not to lick them clean. Now I rub soap under them before planting, though it never helps. But why worry? Dirty nails show a good day, well spent. What I know is while we believe we care for our plots, it is they who nurture us.

Though I love what my pastime brings, I struggle to explain why. Friends utter words such as, "Gardening relaxes me, supports my mental health, or heals my soul," yet never say how. While some claim they talk to their plants, my garden speaks to me and its words make sense. And I'm not the first one. Hippocrates

Long ago, Egyptians believed that to enter heaven they must answer two questions. First, did you give joy? Next, did you find joy? Sound answers to both lie in gardens.

While my huge bookcase holds miles of tomes showing the craft of gardening, this text will not join them as ways to show double digging are finite. I offer no step-by-step guides for building arbours, making gleaming water features, or cropping mangos in Leeds. I intend to explore green mystique, not technique.

So, take heed. This book makes no one an expert and will not transform plots into Chelsea gold medal standard before lunch. Other books cover that. Though you cannot order mindfulness on speed dial, you can manage a garden in ways which help peace and calm visit you. That is the focus of this work.

I hear you ask, "What do I bring that well-known garden authors miss?" Well, for them, job and gardening resemble two drops of water leaving the same tap, while my gardening comes after family, work, and sleep. Days in my plot take time from other pursuits, so I cannot copy our experts. I find the same pleasure in my imperfect plot as they get forging their grand designs, but perhaps less splendour. My unique selling point is I'm no expert, which helps me connect with those whose fingers are flesh coloured, not green. I know how to juggle planting peas, with taking my kids to the park and cooking lunch all on a Sunday morning. Your experts plant their peas at work.

However, we still need gardening heroes. I love them, use their tips, value their skills and respect their passion. Without them, my garden would be poorer and my soul less joyous, so the world deserves more. Yet space remains for my amateur view.

So take these words as my whims, not a sermon. I aim to spread joy and help readers see gardening from fresh angles. Gardening well is satisfying but less valuable than feeling well gardening.

Contents/List of blogs

Page 1 Introduction

Page 3 Contents

Page 4 About Your Narrator. Who Am I?

Page 9 What is a Garden? A Trawl through Time

Page 24 When Faced with a Superior Opponent, Stop Fighting

Page 39 Novice or Inexperienced?

Page 54 Fashion Statements Do Not Help Mindfulness

Page 68 Pests, Diseases, and Garden Hazards

Page 81 Allotments

Page 94 Gardening is Subversion

Page 107 In Defence of the Weed

Page 120 Gardening, you are a Life Coach.

Page 133 Colour and Interest

Page 146 Using Things You Grow

Page 159 What Kind of Gardener are you?

Page 173 Horticulture and the Arts

Page 189 Gardening without a Garden

Page 200 The Makeover Garden

Page 212 Effective Practice or Away with the Fairies?

Page 226 Gardening and Wellbeing

Page 238 The Mindful Gardener's Code

About Your Narrator. Who Am I?

Today brings my 4.6 billionth birthday. It is strange how twenty-four hours make you feel much older. Such a round number means I must celebrate. So today, I will soak the gap between neck and collar of any random climate denier I can find.

Sorry, please allow me to introduce myself. I do get carried away. They call me Prudens Aqua, the first raindrop to fall. I have no parents to blame for my quirky name, since we earn those over a brief million years based on our traits. It is an agender name from the Latin neuter adjective noun meaning ʻ wise water. ʼ My status has a bonus. It avoids stress linked to finding partners. So I never invent false dating profiles or waste time thinking where he, she or they are this time.

But please don't think I'm past it because of my age. I stay fresh, supple and mobile, thanks to what you humans call, ʻ The Water Cycle. ʼ I keep busy. One minute hitching rides on vapour rising from oceans before cooler air alters my state. A brief visit to the upper atmosphere follows. This ends with a dizzy crash to the ground, then repeat. The hurtle to earth part never gets easier, making me feel sick every time. Though this may happen twenty times per week, I once stayed frozen in the Artic for two million years. I like those quick naps. I shatter when I hit the ground, which makes humans believe I have no brain, judging me by my H2O skin. After the gas parts break, I thumb a ride on fresh hydrogen and oxygen molecules when they return skywards. I renew more often than Doctor Who.

While this does not sound serious I work hard. Though humans call my work ʻ The Water Cycle, ʼ I am much more. I give and sustain all life. Without me, there is no you, though the opposite is not true. Eons before homo sapiens stumbled from trees, I rose and fell and will conduct my rounds long after your extinction. Oh yes, humans will die out unless they mend their ways. It happened to other species, though dinosaurs or dodos did not cause their own grim fate.

I know you cite the laws of physics when describing rain, but I am more than one branch of science. I watch major events unfold and touch each square metre of the planet many times each thousand years and am expert in all fields, knowing history, art, and geography beyond PhD level. I speak 6,632 languages. If, when I arrive, you say, "Oh, not rain again," you demean yourself. So never take me for granted.

Though my first love is history, this job yields perks, and free travel takes me everywhere, but not first class. I love scoring front row views at key events. My big regret was reaching Pompeii too late soon after viewing the meteor which killed off poor T-Rex. Still, I helped by damping down Vesuvius. I splashed the guillotine which cut Marie Antoinette down to size and watered the Garden of Eden's seeds. My sense of fun shows when I frizz rich ladies' hair or stop cricket games at crucial points.

Before Livingstone dripped his sweat on the Victoria Falls, I knew their real name was "The Smoke That Thunders" and I claimed America for nature, 4,599,999,517 years before Columbus. Although I speak in human years, time means nothing to me, but I hope their use helps you.

Other past roles involved misting lycophytes you only know through fossils. I also soaked T-Rex and drenched the pyramids. I achieved my life's ambition when I wet the last block in the Great Wall of China. Before flowers existed, I soaked sulphur bogs. I know the most precious plant you grow will vanish while I blink twice and inhale once. If I disappear, so do humans. If humans disappear, I will splash on with what remains after you.

So why tell you this? As I drift round the planet, blown by weather systems I follow but cannot affect, I see changes in humans. For millennia, they lived in harmony with nature; now they crush it and rage against it. Human damage exceeds the meteorite, which doomed the dinosaurs. Without blushing, you blame me and my cousins when we cannot arrive and crops perish. When floods wash mud two metres up your stairs, you curse us. There is irony in giving storms, cyclones, and hurricanes human names, because human acts make them more destructive. Why outsource the blame to me?

Therefore, a deep urge to change my role from spectator to force for positive change consumes me. Once Europeans started burning coal, I wanted to speak to their societies. Those you now call primitive tribes respected water. They saw rain as a friend and worshipped me. They chatted to streams living in peace with nature, cherishing the surrounding plants. Modern people think themselves above nature. Therefore, they exploit her instead of hearing her messages.

Once I told some human tribes to invade Europe because I wanted them to inflict their culture upon the countries destroying the Amazon or culling bison to make room for cattle. They replied that was not in their nature. They wanted to be left alone, not invade other lands.

Just imagine if European monarchs had adopted native Amazon and North American attitudes towards nature. Would climate change exist? Instead, they imposed warped values on good souls. Most humans deserve their self-inflicted fate, but what of the nine million other species sharing the planet? For every human, there is a unique plant, animal, insect, or micro-organism. Why should they vanish through the vanity of one rogue species? The desire to give humans a stern talking to consumes me, but I cannot write and modern humans do not listen to me. Though I can spell, holding pens or tapping keyboards defeats me. However, one Matipu person in Brazil, Sariruwa, hears me. Knowing him restores my faith that humans can change. We met when I stuck to his fishing spear while he spoke to a stream in the Amazon. I have taught him how to record what I say. Though sharing my aims, he softens my views and tones down my language when he repeats my words.

So, with Sariruwa's help, I will launch blogs on many subjects. Let's start with gardening. Why? Because most people have one space they can affect, their garden. They found it briefly during lockdown. If they learn the joy of caring for this space by putting nature first, they may demand the same for land outside their plot. It is my plan to save the world.

And why me you shout? I agree humans have more garden experts than T-Rex had ticks. Because I know stuff they don't. While timeless raindrop has seen most gardens ever made, your horto gurus enjoy the life span of mayflies in my terms. Like drones, I watch from above, finding better viewpoints. To keep busy, I nurture lichens in the artic, support the Amazon rain forest or water 43, Rose Lane's front lawn. I am lord of green multi-tasking, you must agree. Your experts struggle to focus on one small piece of ground for seven months and send other people off to report from a range of gardens. Lazier still, they get you to send in films of your garden.

Now, what of your human experts? They recommend no chemicals and insect friendly planting, which is a good start. But avoiding climate change ruin needs tougher action as the planet's life declines. So let me have a go.

So we are ready for our first blog. I will chunk ideas down to help humans keep up, using thinking wider than most people draw on, though not so broad only rain drops follow. One extra benefit working with Sariruwa brings is he enjoys drawing. He has no phone to take photos but wants to show his family what the UK looks like when he goes home. He likes my art shop charcoal sticks in place of burnt twigs from the cooking fire. However, he struggles with the paper I gave him because he learnt to paint on rock faces and cloth. Still, he never complains.

What Is A Garden? A trawl Through Time.

We will explore all things gardening, but what do we mean by "garden". Perhaps you think there is no need. ʻ What is a garden? ʼ No one asks this as the answer seems obvious, like nobody says, ʻ What is a tree? ʼ But trust me, garden is a hard word to explain. The more we try, the harder finding a firm meaning becomes. But as discussing topics we cannot define seems futile, we need to agree on what a garden is.

Would asking twenty people to define the word garden produce twenty answers the same? I doubt it. Most might refer to outdoor space, plants, and privacy. Could gardens offer more? Let's explore further.

Even though the word has roots in three human languages: German, French, and middle English, it means an enclosed space in each. How far protecting ground for plants rather than human defence dates back is vague. Human records show the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are 2,500 years old, while tales exist of walled gardens in Egypt 1,500 years before. People planted land in Syria in 8,500 B.C. E. I finished napping in the Antarctic then, but my cousins say this is correct.

So, what does enclosed space offer that wild moorland, meadows and dense forests lack? Although some enclosed spaces are not gardens, as bees need nectar, humans want privacy. Walls and fences keep animals out while stopping neighbours from taking crops or watching you relax. Fenced in space belongs to the owner. The garden becomes loved, and life's giddy speed slows as humans shut the world out. No such luck for raindrop.

Since I enter from above, neither hedges nor fences keep me out and I see more gardens than any human. I once landed in a garden in a housing estate. The first owner counted ten windows looking into his garden. He wanted to block their view with trees and shrubs. So, he planted then waited. The texture and colours of bark, leaves, flowers, and fruits improved the gardens look. Breeze rustled leaves mixed with birdsong created gentle music and flower perfume added joy. However, privacy was his priority, so when foliage blocked the tenth window out, he rejoiced. So seclusion and ownership help define a garden. But I wonder why housing firms fell trees to clear land for houses when people want trees.

Perhaps gardens began when simians first dug ditches or built earth mounds round wild plants which gave food, like pears, figs, or grapes. This stopped birds and animals from eating them. When creatures raided these crops, the hunter gatherer waited for meat to come to him. So the space you call your oasis of peace and calm began as a survival aid.

The next step was grouping such plants. This way, one fence or hedge length protected more crop. During the iron age, the Bocage region of France used standard measures for such enclosures. One size for crops, bigger areas for woodland to provide fuel and even larger for grazing. The Bocage stone filled earth walls stopped soil erosion, which I cause when arriving in a hurry. Please accept my apologies.

Once people protected plants, they found in the wild, the next step was to plant them nearer the cave or hut. This reduced their food search area. While planting pear trees in straight lines looked neat, it happened for practical reasons, not looks. It was easy to pick bushes with even spacing.

Later, humans found crops grew better if they removed unwanted plants from these spaces. Nature saw the start of climate change's incoming tide. A shift from humans walking through the living world to ruling it. Raindrops saw how long they spent finding food and watched the wars they fought to keep or take it. Why kill when you can share and trade? Prudens is glad we aquatic blobs do not eat.

Next, from taming landscapes came a lack of respect; today we see the harm. Global warming results from felling trees, then burning coal and oil. Sadly, burning forests to help food plants and animals started at least 90,000 years ago. 60,000 years later, humans first cultivated ground. Did they know ants farmed fungi for millions of years before that? I landed on one when it brought leaves to feed fungus in the nest, before it ran under a sabre-toothed tiger's legs for shelter.

Now we have the first aspect for our definition of garden, which sets it apart from somewhere things grow, the concept of an enclosed space near the cave, hut or house.

When humans first protected wild trees and shrubs, then planted and shielded chosen plants for food, they took the first steps in making gardens. Next came growing plants to use, such as herbs. Last, flowers for looks not use took gardens to a new level. As human towns grew fast, social structures allowed a few to find leisure hours. When I landed for the third time in the Agora in Athens, I noticed these changes. Chiefs, clan leaders, nobles etc. had free time and now they found fresh ways to use outside space. This takes us to spirituality, which holds hands with gardening, whichever faith you choose.

The Bible offers,

"Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed…" (Genesis 2.8). (My cousin splashed Adam's head and Eve giggled.)

The Koran promises,

"Those who guard against evil will have gardens with their Lord." (Surah Al'Imran, 15) I adore the value Islam places on water in gardens. The Alhambra Palace is my favourite space, and all raindrops get excited when it's their turn to go there.

Hindu texts dating back further state,

"Gods come near the places which have water and gardens in them." I have descended the Ganges four times. Each time the number of humans bathing there for worship staggers me.

The Egyptians used trees as symbols for their gods and their temples had gardens. I learnt to speak hieroglyphic to find out more.

Buddhist beliefs centre on respect for nature; the soul of gardening.