The Furious Garden

The first thing I noticed when I entered The Garden was the waterfall, furious, untamed, thundering. It was intimidating and powerful with a rainbow blooming in the mist where it fed into a deep river. Snaking throughout The Garden, the river brought life and fresh air. The Garden was full of plentiful fruit trees, eye-catchingly exotic birds that sang beautifully, and an endless expanse of green that felt overwhelmingly of paradise. Sure, there were walls where The Garden ended, but each wall seemed further than I would have expected. The Garden was everything I could have asked for and more and I was her gardener.

My passion for gardening came long before The Garden, though I would have to say that passion did not translate to skill. The Garden was my first real successful attempt at gardening, though it didn’t come without error. The first months of being The Garden’s gardener were toilsome. It seemed as though The Garden’s will was her own and the more I tried to make her conform to what I wanted in a garden, the more resistance I met. I eventually realized that the nature of The Garden was success. She had grown before me and would continue to grow after me. My goal was not to force The Garden to change, but to help The Garden bring out her beauty. Once I started that, the work was no longer work. Toil became satisfaction. Work became pleasure. Hours of effort under the hot sun of day turned to fleeting moments on a perfect spring. Suddenly, The Garden and I were one. The more I got to know her, the more I stopped trying to even clean up the rough edges. The Garden was not perfect, but it was spectacular.

I loved every spot in The Garden. I spent hours eating the fruit of the trees while walking the winding paths. I loved diving head first into the deep, strong river, letting the current pull me and change my course. But my favorite spot in The Garden was sitting in the shade of the great trees and watching the peony. The Garden, although vibrant with green and life, had one flower. Only one. That flower was found on a peony shrub in the center of the garden. It stood alone, proud, bright, massive. It was yellow and looking at it in the full light of day was almost like looking at the sun: it was too bright and brilliant to look at directly. I would be lying if I said I hadn't at times pictured my garden as only fields of flowers, but that was before I understood what a garden could be. The peony was my favorite spot because it reminded me of the deep, complex beauty that was The Garden. This peony was simple and obviously beautiful and it was easy to think of it so. As I spent time in my garden, I saw that each fruit came from a blossom. These small blossoms would never make a beautiful bouquet, but that isn’t why they existed. Each blossom created life-giving fruit, despite its small size. The purpose of these blossoms outshone the inutility of floral arrangements. The Garden was complex and rich but beauty wouldn’t be the first word some people would use to describe it. They would be wrong. So I often spent much of my time sitting in the shade of the tall fruit trees, eating the fruit that came from small blossoms, and staring at the peony, the finishing touch dropped in the middle of The Garden I loved.

It was subtle, the crashing of The Garden walls. It was not overnight. The roots of the trees, fed by the soil, sun, and water, started growing under the walls. These walls, built when The Garden was saplings, a spring, and forget-me-nots, these walls that were meant to protect a fragile garden, became barriers, containing the furious Garden from bursting forth. Every day, the roots pressed on. I think it was a process that started long before I ever entered The Garden. I was excited for the world to behold The Garden, her beauty, her power. So when the walls fell, I invited friends, family, strangers, everyone. No one could escape me without an invitation to see The Garden. The fruit was given free and without effort. Many passed the peony with admiration. Some thought it too small a showing of flowers. I was sad when some I thought would love the richness of The Garden walked away, disappointed in what I spent my time loving. It made me worried. Was I wrong? Was a garden for flowers only? Sometimes the thought still crosses my mind and I wish I could have it all. But The Garden was never meant to be taken at face value. It was a garden of production. It was a garden of power. It was a garden to be beheld. And many people did behold her with awe. Then they came.

There was no warning. One day, like the inevitable storm, came they all. They had heard of a garden with one flower. They saw no beauty in trees. They found the river overwhelmingly large and too complex. They critiqued The Garden for her lack of flowers. They said a garden like that, with its waterfall of rage, its mists, its fruits, was not the way gardens should be. Gardens could not produce. Gardens could not be untamed. Gardens were to be controlled by the gardener. They rarely spoke to me, but if they did, they critiqued my skill as a gardener. Often they would say to The Garden, “Oh your poor gardener. How he must wish for a different garden.” Or, “Any garden planted with the seeds and sprouts of this jungle are surely doomed.” I never did wish for another garden. They spent so much time examining the peony, grabbing at it with unloving hands, that the brightness became dimmed as delicate pedals were crushed. The blossom started to struggle. Some may say it was the fault of The Garden, that any garden should have plenty of flowers, so when people stomp on them, those destroyed are not significant. So they didn’t blame themselves when they destroyed the only flower in The Garden. They never considered that killing that bush would not produce more flowers. They called themselves gardeners. They considered themselves connoisseurs of nature. They claimed to love flowers. But when they left, they hadn’t tasted the fruits, they hadn’t swam in the river, and they had killed the only flower The Garden had left to offer. And The Garden moved on.

I cried a lot in the weeks and months that followed. The Garden’s beauty was still so deep, but I had loved that peony for what it had been: the balance of the two worlds. Out of habit I would find myself sitting under the fruit trees, staring at the dry bunch of leaves that was the peony bush. It was amazing how much they had taken without touching almost anything at all. I still miss her peony.

People with every good intention came in, telling The Garden it was okay not to grow flowers, that the rest of the life and beauty of the garden was so overwhelmingly enough. The Garden let go of flowers. The blossoms of the fruit were constant reminders of the beauty of The Garden’s life-bringing abilities, despite the lack of representation of “presentable” flowers.

And so The Garden stands today: vibrant, with exotic birds in her trees and the beautiful rainbow cast from its raging waterfall. I hope someday The Garden will let some flowers back into her, but for now I am content knowing that her soil is rich with nutrients, her fruit is sweeter than that of any other garden, and that she is at peace. My Garden may never grow flowers again, but she will always be more spectacular than I, the gardener, will ever understand.