No two gardens will ever be exactly the same but neither will any two days or even two hours be identical in the same garden. The light and the wind changes, insects fly, birds pause and hover and the landscape changes before our eyes. Additionally, the same gardener sees the garden differently at different times.

For example after we go on a garden tour of gardens that have been groomed for the occasion, we come home and look at our own gardens with critical eyes. Or, one day we prune up a bush and suddenly the plants around it and behind it emerge as if they had developed new personalities.

New Perspectives

But of course the sightlines changed, not the plants, and we the viewers suddenly saw the plants from new perspectives. In different years we become absorbed by different things. Some years I may concentrate on the trees, looking at them as if I had never seen them before and almost obsessing...well, actually obsessing about them if the truth were told.

The next season I will rediscover the perennials or be horrified enough to rip out an entire bed that suddenly seems too awful to be tolerated although I have lived with it the way it was for years. I suppose it is who WE are at different stages in our lives that drives what we see and how we respond to our own landscapes.