“All gardening is landscape painting.”

– Alexander Pope, 18th century English poet

THERE is no doubt that the harshness of the climate is the reason places like Britain and Canada have such avid gardeners. When you spend half the year cooped up inside while nature pelts the ground with snow, cold rain and raw winds, you certainly welcome the short growing period when the ground becomes soft enough to till and whatever you plant springs up vigorously. By contrast, in a place like Jamaica where the weather remains more or less the same all year round, making things grow is much less of an attraction.

The city where I live, Toronto, is situated in what Canadians call the banana belt, because of its relatively mild climate. There is only one place in the country with a milder climate – southern British Columbia. The capital of that province is Victoria, which lies on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, home of a huge tract of temperate rain forest. Victoria is swept by the waters of the north-eastern Pacific, with currents coming from warmer reaches of the ocean keeping its port ice-free.

It’s almost obligatory for the visitor to take in Butchart Gardens, a little way outside the city. It was built more than a century ago by a prominent family in an old pit where limestone was extracted to supply the plants which made the concrete to build the city and nearby communities. The gardens have transformed the ugly old hole in the ground into a 55-hectare wonderland. It features indigenous plants, shrubs and trees as well as more exotic flora imported from elsewhere. The people who run the place claim that every month of the year there’s at least one plant that blooms.

On a visit several years ago, I saw a tree with many bottles attached to it. I have now forgotten what fruit it was, but the neat thing was that the staff placed each bottle over the little bud from which each fruit grew. When the fruit matured inside the bottle, they snipped it off and then filled the bottle with a liqueur made of the fruit and sold it in the garden store. I am sure most of those bottles remain unopened while on display on someone’s shelf as a curiosity.

Quite a different type of garden can be found in the charming city of Santa Rosa, California, an hour or so north of San Francisco. It is right across from city hall and surrounds the house where the famous botanist and experimenter Luther Burbank lived. In a career spanning more than half a century, Burbank created more than 800 new breeds of vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, grasses and flowers. A strain of potato he developed early on – the large Burbank Russet – is the most widely used potato for food processing in the world and the staple of the McDonald’s hamburger chain. The city inherited the gardens in 1977 upon the death of his second wife, who wanted it maintained as a shrine to Burbank’s life work.

You can sample formal gardens such as these in just about any vacation spot you visit, and each has its own charm and special attraction. The one thing they have in common is that they are attractions and bring in revenue for the places where they are found.

It was a treat for me as a small child to be taken to Hope Gardens on a Sunday afternoon to enjoy the colourful Zouave uniforms of the Jamaica Military Band and the lively, accessible music they performed on the manicured lawn. That was only half the treat – the other was to wander around and savour the colourful variety of flowers and plants there.

But, however novel, attractive and awe-inspiring all these gardens may be, it is the private ones we grow in our yards, be they estate-sized or a tiny patch behind the town house, which provide tranquillity and pleasure. Some folks who don’t even have a yard to speak of can still enjoy the beautiful company of plants in small beds or pots. The Japanese, who fall into this category, have perfected the art of minimal gardens with just a few carefully selected plants surrounded by carefully raked gravel to focus the attention and the mind into a state of tranquillity. And for those really pressed for space, they have developed bonsai, in which they provide a very small percentage of the moisture and food a seedling needs to grow into a tree, while grooming it into a shape resembling what it would normally look like.

The avid gardener loves every aspect of the process – digging and laying out the beds, putting in well-rotted manure, making compost from kitchen scraps, starting the seeds and then transplanting them when they reach a viable state, weeding, pruning, staking and supporting as well as fighting off the slugs, grubs, aphids and the other creatures which share an interest in the plants.

At our house my wife is the gardener and enjoys all these aspects, leaving mostly the heavy lifting to the spouse, son and grandson. Precisely because we spend several months indoors, it is a most welcome sight when the chives push their way up through the remnants of the snow in the spring, soon to be joined by the white, purple and yellow crocuses and the various varieties of tulip. I spend as much time as I can in the backyard under the Chinese gooseberry vine which covers the arbour over the deck and forms a kind of outdoor room.

The holly plants, the cedar trees and the euonymus vine covering the back fence remain green all year, taking the edge off the winter, but brighten up as soon as the days get longer and warmer. The cherry and pear trees spring to life and quickly become covered in white flowers as April turns to May. Within days, it seems, the whole place shakes off its winter drab and takes on a whole new complexion.

It’s one of my favourite places to just hang out and observe the birds which drop by to sample the fare in the feeder. In the winter you see a few sparrows and cardinals with their cheery red plumage, but many other kinds of birds come by in the warm weather.

The robins with their rust-coloured chests are regular visitors, splashing in the little ornamental fountain and parading all over the lawn with heads cocked to one side, listening for insects and other creatures in the grass. They especially appreciate the earthworms which are every gardener’s friend because their burrows aerate the soil and the earth they process through their bodies to extract nourishment is also nourishing for the plants.

The other night I attended a meeting of our neighbourhood garden club to hear a talk by a fellow who writes about gardening for books and magazines.

In a witty and entertaining discourse he touched on many aspects of what makes a garden and a gardener, and described the many gardens he has made and has seen in his extensive travels. For him, gardening is a joy to be savoured by the gardener as well as others who come along to appreciate the beauty and the connection to nature.

I know some keen gardeners who spend a lot of time, money and elbow grease to maintain their perfectly groomed garden. The trouble is, they never seem to just stop and enjoy the fruits of their work – it is always go, go, go. Quite a difference from a concept expressed by the fellow at that meeting: If you’re not smiling, you’re not doing it right!

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca