Gardens

Am I alone in chatting to the plants in my garden? Surely not. Anyone who passes a trailing rosemary bush on a daily basis will attest to its cheerful grandmotherly demeanor, while those who deal with roses must have noticed their devious sense of humour, not often noted in the saccharine depictions of roses on Valentines Day cards. Maybe that’s just the ones at my place, or perhaps my poor pruning technique, but still… I’m pretty sure I’m onto something here.

Then there’s the bay tree. It’s got a very distinctive character, a sort of dignified disdain and unwillingness to participate in my feeble human ways. So what if I want to make a soup with several bay leaves? I can only have one, and I should be ashamed of myself for thinking otherwise, even though there are healthy leaves aplenty. I suspect there’s some wisdom of economy in this. Maybe the reason the leaves are so healthy is because I don’t pull too many of them off.

Other characters don’t seem to want anything to do with me. For example, I’ve never been able to bring myself to buy iris plants, because they always seem to be laughing at me whenever I see some at the nursery. Even when they’re dormant, I can’t help but get the feeling they don’t think much of me. Maybe we could get along if I just sucked it up and tried growing some, or maybe they’d cackle evilly at me and introduce some weird pathogen into the soil. I’ve already got those cheeky roses to contend with, after all, and if the irises got the roses on side then all hell could break loose. I’m just lucky that the rosemary is on my side, and the bay tree is neutral. 

It’s also entirely possible that I’m losing my marbles, and that plants don’t communicate with humans at all. I feel like that’s not the case, but I’m open to the possibility.

When you think about, plants are from outer space. So are we, I guess, but let’s just focus on plants for a minute. Looking at them from this perspective really explains a lot. From their creeping tendrils to their overwhelming green-ness, plants bear an uncanny resemblance to the ‘little green men’ of our intergalactic imaginings. 

Seriously, think about it. Their way of life is completely different to ours, and yet identifiable to us as a way of life. We have a sense of ancient kinship with plants, and yet there’s a wide gulf between where we’ve each ended up. Take your garden variety bay tree. Potted plant specimens aren’t hard to come by; you can even buy them online. They’re low maintenance, and we can use their leaves as a culinary herb, and they have a generally friendly quality about them. And yet, they’re largely inscrutable to we humans.

If a plant as down-to-earth as a bay tree has a strange vibe about it, then what of plants that are perceived as wilder, weirder and more dangerous? Think of carnivorous jungle plants, poisonous datura and belladonna, and those mystery species that dwell under the sea, of all places. They must be more along the lines of what I’m talking about, right? Well, not necessarily. A key part of my proposition is that all plants are equally alien. 

Really, though, you have to see what I’m talking about to believe it. If you’re not doing it already, go and get started on some gardening post haste. You don’t have to go for anything out of the ordinary. In my view, the wackiness encompasses plants in general, from obscure Arctic mosses to the garden-friendly camellia tree. Buy online, go to a nursery or beg the elderly lady down your street for cuttings – it doesn’t matter. Just get some plant babies in your life and find out for yourself how strange they are. 

If you take the time to ask them and listen for the answers, they might even disclose the secrets of the galaxy. Stranger things have happened.