Today’s gardening topic is nicked from a very good book called ‘Dead Romance’, in which an unseen race of time travellers create art that is designed to appreciate in aesthetics as it ages and decays, leading the narrator to coin the term ‘four dimensional art’ to describe it. At first I thought it was just a cool bit of imagination on the part of the author, but then I realised that so much of what I do in gardening is intended to develop and change with time, often in unpredictable ways.

Alright, so yes, all art is four dimensional, as all art changes through time, but I think there is something special about the way plants grow and change in a garden and in bonsai. They don’t just start to fall apart, or accrue stains and stories and reinterpretations- they grow. Literally grow, and though I might nudge them onto a path, they grow of their own volition in their own way.

As anyone who follows my insty might have noticed, the main ‘progress’ my garden has made over the past few months is a proliferation of little pots everywhere. Most of these pots are full of cuttings and saplings from various bonsai or other plants, like this maple cutting I was very kindly gifted from Blackheath.



Sure, it isn’t much to look at now, but it will grow. Even as it does, however, it is important to remember that it will always have been this little scraggly fella at some point. I don’t like buying fully developed plants a lot of the time for this reason: I want to be a part of the process, to be part of its history.

Of course, this means opening myself up to countless failures. Young plants can die for any old reason; negligence, too hot, too cold, too frail, or too tasty for bugs. Which is why I have so many little pots. And from all this I learn. I learn how to protect what I have and how to nurture life. I also learn what I can control and what I can’t, which is a valuable lesson for an incredibly anxious person.

When I started Bonsai, I wanted to control every little aspect of my plants. I though that was the point of Bonsai. But if you try to do too much, you’ll only kill your plant, or lock it upon boring path of growth. You’ll be denied things like this:



That is the incredibly gnarly and characterful root base of a neglected Yew that had been left forgotten in the corner of a nursery and had to be cut out of the ground. If it had been more attentively looked after, its roots would be considerably neater and less scraggly and so much more boring. Because you can’t intend how it ended up. And I think there is a beauty in that.

Those two stalks? Another product of neglect. Two off-shoots that sprung from the cramped and overgrown roots of the yew. They are now both developing as trees of their own, and though they might look skinny and insubstantial now, given another 10-15 years they might just start to rival their parent. Until then, they will cling to its shadow, and it will dutifully watch over them.



That’s all for now! Peace, love and wholesome thoughts. I’ll be back on Sunday with a cooking post!