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Illustration by Christine Wei
My garden is in full bloom now, the late spring warmth and showers having worked their magic again. Out front, there’s a cluster of huge double peonies that I call my Pink Ladies – a nod to the cocktail my mother used to make my sister and me (even when we were young!) on Christmas Eve. They dance elegantly in the breeze, their showy flowers in bubble gum hues attracting passersby who stop to admire them and take photos. The Ladies arch gracefully over a glorious patch of lavender, an homage to Provence where I lived as a student. Nestled against that purple cloud is my Bleeding Heart, the sole surviving plant from my divorce, aptly named. And tucked behind that spectacular front row are patches upon patches of flowers and shrubs that recall so many people and events in my life over the 35 years I’ve been in my home.
My garden is hardly expansive, it’s a 10 x 10 square fronting a small semi on a busy main street. I don’t have a particularly green thumb, so I’ve had to work at it. When I first moved in and began to tackle the tangled mess I’d inherited, a dear friend of my youth named Ed, a sort of substitute dad to my absent one, came to offer suggestions. An avid horticulturist, he saw my efforts were failing and understood what I was up against – a giant maple whose roots were sucking the nutrients from everything else. Eddy advised me to remove the grass, gave me Solomon’s Seal and Lily-of-the Valley from his garden and told me that, delicate as they were, they’d outwit the tree.
I liked thinking of him whenever his plants pushed through the winter frost each year, especially after he was gone. With little money to invest in more, I decided to plant cuttings from friends and family, and over time, I exchanged the favour, too. It was a slow process, but it’s transformed my small yard into a garden of memories, a lush reminder of the rich life I’ve lived in this house because of the people whose paths I’ve crossed. It’s also an endless source of enjoyment, and not just for me.
The tiger lilies that bloom in the heat of summer were a gift from my neighbour Jack, a widower who died 30 years ago. Jack wintered in Portugal, returning only for the warmer months to tend his garden. When he did, he’d sleep on a mattress on his enclosed porch, saying that he liked to talk to the moon every night before bed. My kids thought that was so fantastic, we pitched a fake tent and did the same on ours. Jack’s backyard was full of Tiger Lilies, his wife’s favourite, and he said I reminded him of her.
My neighbour Marion two doors up is in my garden, too, her hydrangeas uprooted with permission when she moved to a retirement home. The day I moved in, she’d waved over the back fence and, not long after, her chatty husband Bob brought me lettuce and endless stories from his garden. Till he passed on, he was my advisor, teaching me to till, plant and prune. When I call Marion now, she proudly says the plant I brought as a housewarming present is thriving in the sun, and we’re both glad to have flowers as mutual reminders of our long friendship between visits.
As life would have it, I also have plants in my garden from people whose friendships have run their course. A Monet-esque patch of iris, feathery astilbe, hardy hostas and creeping phlox – I look at those plants with fondness, and think not of breaches or loss, but of kindnesses that were shared, a perennial reminder of happy times.
And, of course, there are all the flowers that my children and I chose together – tulips and crocuses to celebrate my older daughter’s birthday on the first day of Spring, bright daisies my younger daughter adored and occasionally snipped to make daisy chains. Out back is a flowering crab apple tree that was barely taller than my little girls when I put it in the ground 25 years ago and now towers over our tiny patio. It bursts into pale pink glory every year then drops its petals like snow on a Buddha I bought with a dear friend who died four years ago of cancer. There are delphiniums, tea roses and ivy which adorned my mum‘s casket, clusters of blue forget-me-nots from a new and unexpected friend. A poppy from my sister.
Potted vegetables include pickling cucumbers grown from my next-door-neighbour’s seeds, a beloved friend who was there from the beginning and recently died. And each year, my husband plants pods dried from his dad’s garden which yield Italian flat beans that would have made my father-in-law awfully proud.
It still takes work and I’m grateful I no longer have to do it all alone. But every year, I wink at Mother Nature and thank her for doing the heavy lifting, leaving me free to marvel at new growth, and to reminisce over the many people whose flowers have been transplanted into my garden, and whose spirits have touched my life.
Shirley Phillips lives in Toronto.
