A garden of joy
Discover the timeless joy of garden dining—shade, nature & simple pleasures. Reconnect with your roots under a tree, where happiness grows.
We’ve just had lunch in the garden, and we were happy. The happiness had a multitude of causes, but a large chunk of it was simply because the leaves above covered us with dappled light, the small birds jumped around us hoping that the long-grained rice might be insect larvae and we’d share. The air smelled of leaves, flowers, bees and ripening tomatoes. The grass was soft, and the dog lay under the table in doggie bliss.
Garden joy is the birthright of every human, known and practised for uncounted millennia.
It’s a simple recipe: find food and drink, choose a tree with grass or log, check there is no snake behind the log or panther up the trees, then sit and eat and talk and laugh, with the universe spreading above you and the whispering of tree leaves all around.
It is perhaps one of life’s most profound pleasures, like holding a newborn baby in your arms, but it is out of reach for so many in the world now. Even more tragically, many who are quite affluent enough to have lunch in a garden have never realised that they need to.
If you are lucky, you will have a park, so someone else does the mowing. If you are very lucky, you will have a garden too.
What does a garden need to maximise the happiness?
- A tree tall enough to give you shade. As a bonus, it may also give you fruit, flowers or you can climb it when life becomes too hassled. There is great calmness to be found looking at the world while sitting in a tree. In climates with cold winters and hot summers, the tree should be deciduous, giving you sunlight when you need it and shade to cool you, your home and, in a tiny but important way, the planet. Please plant a tree today. You don’t need to buy one: depending on your climate, plant some apple seeds taken from the core of the last apple you ate, or the stone from an avocado. Both apples and avocado trees make wonderful climbing, eating and sitting-under trees. If your home is rented, plant a tree for those who will come after you.
- Grass or something green that is not artificial lawn. Artificial lawn is hot, smells horrible and kills almost everything beneath it. Paving is better and more beautiful, as long as you leave gaps between some of the pavers so water can penetrate. Plant the gaps with white alyssum or yellow calendulas or primulas or prostrate mint, to keep out weeds and cool the paving down as you water them. Our ground cover in non-grassed areas are yellow flowered lamium, which grows ankle high but can be mown and tolerates quite dense shade as well as dappled shade. Thyme lawns smell glorious but do attract bees. They also need much weeding and top dressing by covering their stems with new soil or compost every winter, or they become woody, prickly to sit on and will also rot and die.
- Flowers. I love to grow rambling roses, clematis, wonga vine or grapes up my trees. It means the wallabies can’t reach them, possums don’t like to clamber through the growth and pests are confused by the double shape and scents. Plant your rambling rose or vine about a metre away from the trunk. Feed and water it well for about five years. After that, feed and water when you remember, especially on hot nights when the scent of cool water on hot soil is a blessing from the divine. You might also like to water yourself, your beloved, the kids and the dog — the water will still get to the tree and its companion. Do not water the cat. It will be annoyed.
This should be your inheritance from all your ancestors: the chance to sit under a tree and listen to wind play its song through the leaves.
