“If you want to be happy for a month, buy a car. If you want to be happy for a year, get married, But, if you want to be happy for life, plant a garden.”

I must confess, I am no gardener, but we do have a garden and recently, I have been spending a lot of time in it.

Not to garden as such, I leave that to my husband, who enjoys sowing seeds, using his propagator, and potting things on. No, the reason I have been spending time in the garden is all the weeds!

Last year, I was too ill to do any weeding and the borders are showing it. My husband cuts the lawn, sows, plants and prunes, but he is blind to the weeds. For me, I can’t stand to see a tangled bed full of couch grass, nettles and dandelions.

And we have bindweed. Bindweed is almost impossible to eradicate. I asked a gardening friend how to get rid of it. He said, “You have two options: either you can move house, or you can just give thanks it’s not Japanese Knotweed!”

But I have still been down on my hands and knees, grubbing out the pale stems that go down forever. It’s been surprisingly satisfying. Maybe there is something about planting a garden, after all.

I do love some of our flowers though. The peony and lilac are just over but the roses are coming into their own and the irises are still in bloom. I think irises are my favourite flower. They don’t have a perfume, but the shape of them is heart-lifting and the range of colours never ending. I have some gold and brown ones out now, that my husband bought me years ago because he knew I would love the colours. At a National Trust property at the weekend, we saw some fabulous, blousy white irises, and my heart was full of admiration and lust. “Can I have some like that, please?” I asked.

At present, fully half the lawn is taken up by a large trampoline. Our daughter no longer uses it and it’s time to sell it. Once we have the garden back, my husband has great ideas for redesigning the whole thing. My heart is full of trepidation however, as I don’t want to lose any of my favourite plants. What will become of the red-hot pokers? What about the roses, Deep Secret, Apricot Queen and Arthur Bell? They are like old friends, and I am loath to lose them.

Still, a garden is an ever-changing thing. It grows, matures and then moves on.

I think we are like gardens. We have things in our lives that we plant, carefully nurture, watch bloom and then, when the blooms fade, we deadhead, or grub up and move on. The important thing is to plant something else, just as beautiful, in their place. And to weed out what we don’t want, like bindweed, even if it just keeps coming back.

Mary

A Moodscope member