by Cain Michaels

Created on: July 11, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2008

Divorcing the garden.

I said goodbye to the trees, but they never really left me.
It was the Betulas that hurt the most - -you know- -the Silver Birches - -the Ladies of the Woods'. I think that there were fourteen different species in the garden by the time that it was necessary to go. They were chosen for the variety of bark, leaf colour, leaf size, habit and stature but they were all breathtakingly graceful. They were all special. When I had planted them in the ground part of my heart had gone down into the rich soil with them, urging them to do well, loving them into succeeding. I invited them into my life and then walked out on them. After all, they were only trees.

I said goodbye to the roses, but they never really left me either.
The early pale yellow bravery of Canarybird, the exquisite heady perfume of the old shrub rose whose ancestry included Malmaison where Josephine might herself have tended the first of its kind, the stunning kaleidoscope of exuberance that is Madame Alfred Carriere, all of these and more fuelled the guilt trip that I embarked upon every time one of my senses came within ten feet of a rose anywhere. Yes, I left the roses when we split up but they never let me alone. Silly really - -they were only roses.

I said goodbye to the garden but it wasn't the end. I never walked round the back to see how things were doing (well only three times in ten years) on the weekends when it was my turn to have the kids. It wasn't as if I really minded that the two large beds of winter flowering heathers had simply been mown over because they were too much bother to keep tidy and weed free. After all, they were only plants and anyway they weren't mine anymore. And what did it matter that two of the oldest specimen trees in the garden had been chain sawed down to let more light onto the new decking area? It was a good idea to give away the greenhouse too because caring for the collection of gold lace primulas was far too time consuming. Taken all round it was probably a fortunate thing that I didn't have to spend so much time in a garden anymore.

I said goodbye to the garden but it knew all along that I didn't mean it.

I could plan the next one.
It would have the most exquisite bog garden with a rare dwarf variety of the common osier and the rays of the setting sun would light up the catkins so that they glowed like magic lanterns. There would be a fruit garden, an area where the ground was kept very acid for pieris, azalea and gentian, plus a stunning collection of clematis including the unusual non climbing variety. To add to the sense of discovery it would all be divided into sections with a carefully trimmed purple beech hedge.

Just like the old garden.

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