‘Wow,’ said Mac.
‘And that one there is a Richard Serra.’ He gestured towards the steel wall.
‘So what is this place?’
‘It’s a private home,’ he repeated. ‘The man who lives here loves the arts.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Alan Gibbs.’
I looked at Mac. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
‘He must be very wealthy,’ I fished.
The guy leaned back on his quad. I couldn’t decide if he was a park-keeper or a bouncer come personal bodyguard. He was Maori and built like a bull and not giving anything away.
‘And this is just his garden?’ I fished some more.
‘Oh yes.’
‘It’s not a public park?’
‘No. He loves his sculptures. And he loves animals. He even has some giraffes down there in the fields.’
‘Wow. Giraffes. How interesting. Are you sure this place isn’t open to the public?’ I thought as we were getting on famously with the bouncer, he might bump us up the guest list and let us in.
‘It’s open sometimes.’
‘Tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘No, not tomorrow. Just a couple of times a year.’ My hopes fell.
‘That’s no good. I leave the country tomorrow evening and I won’t be back for another twenty years.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame.’ He grinned again.
‘Can’t we have a quick look now?’
‘No, I’m sorry, it’s late and we’re all leaving.’
‘Not even a quick peek? You see, I’m trying to visit as many gardens in the world. A thousand and one of them. And this one isn’t in the book and…’
‘Look. Here’s the phone number of the estate manager. Maybe you should call him and ask if you can come back tomorrow and see the garden.’
He handed me a business card and then, with considerable aplomb, he nodded, remained silent and gestured towards the gate. We were done. His bouncer’s demeanor ensured that we turned around. He watched as we began our disappointed trudge back towards the cattle grid and out of his zone of responsibility.
All the way home Mac and I discussed how we might adjust our plans for the following day to fit in a visit before my late flight. When we arrived back in suburban Auckland, I raced into the house, tried the number we’d been given but couldn’t get through; just an answerphone. I left a message.
‘Hello. My name’s Kaz Moloney. I’m writing a book on gardens and I know it’s very short notice but I’d really like to visit tomorrow. So if you could call me back on this number I’d really appreciate it. Bye.’
I waited half an hour.
‘Sorry, me again. Just to be clear. I can’t come another time as I’m leaving the country tomorrow and this would be my only chance, so please if you could call me back, that would be great. Bye.’
‘Hi. Me this time as well. In case I don’t hear from you on this phone number, here’s my mobile number too… Bye.’
‘Hi. I guess you’re not around then. Pity.’
Nothing all evening.
As Mac prepared our supper, I sat down and began a web search for Alan Gibbs. He came up straight away but the information available was scant, to say the least. There was only one article, a newspaper snippet from months earlier saying that his garden had been opened for a day to a limited section of the public, and in true Kiwi fashion everyone had enjoyed themselves. All except Mr Alan Gibbs, it would seem, for there was a small photo of him in the amphibious vehicle he uses looking a little grumpy.
The article informed readers that the garden was called The Farm, which understated his achievement somewhat, I thought. I was expecting at least something existential, like The Place, or perhaps something literal, like The Art Garden. I would have been prepared for something intriguing or even pretentious, like the name of one of my favourite gardens in Sandwich, Kent, The Salutation. But no, just The Farm, as if it had always been referred to by the owners and locals as just that.
The remainder of the information in the article just confirmed what little we had been told by Alan Gibb’s hefty henchman. He was a wealthy patron of the arts who had commissioned major sculptors from across the world to create his own private sculpture park. He had a team of groundsmen shearing the grassy canvas on which he showed his works and kept his pet giraffes. But the entry did tell me something his bouncer hadn’t: that he’d been inspired by a visit to Storm King Art Park in upstate New York. Instantly, the Storm King Art Park jumped to the top of my list of ‘must sees’.
What’s more, I realised that over the course of the previous six hours, I had fallen in love with this collector. I’d never met him, and his grumpy face in the photo probably meant that he wouldn’t want to meet me, but he reminded me of Stan: modest, private, selective, and I fell for his vision. It was then that I knew what our garden should be about.
First and foremost, it would be somewhere just for us, for Stan and me, for our children and grandchildren. But if we felt so inclined, we would share our garden one or two days a year with others who may be interested. It would be a real garden. Not a garden concocted to show plants, but a garden that provided, in the true, original Persian spirit, a nourishing place for the weary traveler, where soldiers might rest, where the sweating walker might cool off, where the long journey might come to an end. So our garden needed to begin along the drive, flow in through the tall doors, draw the visitor beyond the platform, to invite, to entice, to massage the senses with wide calming vistas and restorative plants. I wanted people to feel drawn into our garden as a cold man is to a warm hearth, or a parched traveler to a long beer. In addition to physical succor, the garden should provide sustenance for the soul. It should contain artifacts, works of beauty, crafted for our pleasure, hidden between the trees, poking above the grasses.
So we needed cool, spreading pines with their fragrant needles and dark rutted bark, so that over the years they drop a thick rug of needles underfoot to dampen the steps of those brave enough to climb down from the plateau to discover new delights − as I had at The Farm. We needed more bold, stately oaks to keep our only specimen company and remind us all of the ubiquitous courage and versatility of the oaks that flourish worldwide. Between the oaks we needed rocks and stone circles, nests and briars, created to remind us that no matter how we craft and forge art, we are, after all, inarticulate imitators of nature, mere custodians of the mountain and it is her gift if she lets us stay.
I was on fire. Even before I got home I phoned Stan.
‘Check out this link. It’s called The Farm, New Zealand. And this one too… Storm King Art Park, New York State.’
‘Why?’
‘For our garden in Spain.’
‘What garden in Spain?’
‘What do you mean ‘What garden in Spain?’
There was a long silence.
‘Kaz, you need to face it. This may never get approval. We may never finish. We may never live there.’
‘But what about the cold man and the warm hearth?’
‘What?’
‘The parched traveler and the long beer?’
Silence.
‘Come home, Kaz. You’re tired.’
He was right. How much stalling, delay, frustration can a human take before it’s time to stop hoping? All the plans in the world couldn’t move the town hall until they were ready. No matter how painful the prospect, authorisation to finish the building was out of our hands, there was nothing we could do. We had something to show for our investment of course: four high walls surrounding a big, empty courtyard, two wings of vacant concrete rooms. But it wasn’t a house, let alone a home. For four years we’d been staying in local hotels; no chance of laying down our heads on our own pillows. Up at the site there wasn’t even a toilet, we were still pissing in the scrub.
I used to imagine what it would be like when it was finished. Never still, never quiet. From the pool there would be the sound of children playing and water splash
ing. From the house the sound of glasses clinking, me tapping away at my keyboard and someone singing in the shower before dinner. As I gazed out of my study, I would hear eagles calling and the mountain breathing. Down the hillside you would hear the rustle of dry grass, the fall of acorns, the pop of seed heads, the hum of bees. In the Persian garden the water would gurgle and the myrtle would stir. Nothing would be still or quiet.
The cushions on the settee would smell of a milk-nursed baby and Lottie’s suntan lotion. In the evening, the smell of grilling sardines and frangipani. Stan’s hands would smell of newly squeezed tennis balls. Pining for all this, thousands of miles away in New Zealand, I put down the phone and wept.
Still no house
The reality is that today on our plateau, everything is still and quiet and smells only of wild flowers. There is no evidence of human occupation. If you arrive outside the walls and wrench away the boards covering the openings and step inside, you will be in total darkness. It is a still, waiting, dry darkness. After a minute you will be able to make out a smooth, pale grey concrete floor beneath your feet. As your eyes become accustomed to the dark, you will start to see holes in the walls where electric cables stick out, their ends cut and frayed, expecting one day a hand would reach out and connect them like God and Jesus on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.
In the corners of some of the rooms where one day you might see baths and sinks, there are big holes in the floor, where drains lie waiting to suck the grey water off our bodies, the suds from our dishes, the damp sand stains off our beach towels and pour them gently into the sump for recycling. In the ceiling above your head you will find big gaping water pipes, waiting for the explosion of the first supply of water as our plumbing system springs to life. In the one large room where one day we might sit back and sigh with satiation after a late evening meal, a shaft of daylight now hits the floor from above, splitting the dust in the air into tiny sparkling particles. Above you there’s a circular hole in the ceiling where a tall chimney pipe will steer smoke out of our stove and safely up into the night air. As you stand there and imagine, the silence may be broken by the shuffle of wings as the sparrows who have taken up residence fly in and out to their nests in the ceiling. Be careful where you tread. There are mounds of bird shit below the nests.
But that’s it. Nothing else. It’s not a house. It’s a husk. No, not a husk, that’s the wrong word. Describing this building as a husk suggests that life has slipped out of it. In fact, it hasn’t. Life has slipped in. The fact that some of God’s creatures have made this empty shell their home bodes well for us. One day, maybe, we will make this our home too. I wish I could tell you it’s finished, that it all recovered, that the planners approved everything we wanted to do, the builders moved back in and within a few months it was finished. But it’s not.
As was pointed out to me recently by another victim of the Andalusian planning maze, ‘You can’t blame the town hall. They’re trying to cope with years of legal confusion. And you can’t blame the locals. They’re just telling you the best way they’ve found of dealing with the town hall. Everyone’s trying to help you.’ And she was probably right. How right she was symbolized by a bucket of figs presented to us by Muscle Manuel on our last visit.
We had been frustrated by his lack of initiative. Several of the trees he had planted had died and he didn’t seem to be paying attention to a problem we were experiencing with the electricity supply that pumped the water to the garden. So after a few ‘words’ to try to get his eye back on the ball, we were about to get in the car and head back to the airport when he suddenly remembered something, turned and disappeared back into the shed.
‘Here,’ he offered.
We peered inside the bucket.
‘From your fig trees. The ones you planted four years ago. The first harvest.’
A hundred plump, purple fruit, shaped like exotic domes lay slumbering in the warm black plastic.
‘Yours.’
We were humbled by nature’s bounty and although we couldn’t take any more than a handful with us, we thanked him, crammed as many as we could into our bags and headed off. But the smell of the bursting fruit was too much to bear and, on the road back to Casabermeja, we pulled over and stuffed them into our mouths like kids scoffing marshmallows.
The marriage evolves
So what of our marriage? How has all this helped us cope with our crisis? Are we still wilting? Who knows. If we had done nothing for the last six years, not bought our hilltop in Spain or tried to create our Moorish house, not done anything to our London garden, not traveled looking for inspiration from other gardens, then would our marriage be in the same state we find it in now? One can never live an experimental life, keeping one set of variables constant and altering others to see how things turn out; not unless one can freeze time or live in a parallel universe. It’s impossible to say how things would have turned out.
Yet I believe that our marriage has evolved into something stronger simply because we shared a plan for the future and have seen that plan thwarted. I suspect that if we hadn’t had the endless fantasy conversations about what it would be like to drink on our terrace as the sun set, to teach our grandchildren to swim, to organise picnics on our hillside, then perhaps we might have lost sight of the reasons to remain together into old age. We would have lacked a vision of the future in which we both had a continuing role. I know other couples have called it a day when their ‘project children’ ended, moving on happily to other projects alone or with another partner. Our plateau in Spain and the London garden projects we took on when the work in Spain ground to a halt have kept us going, forged a future for us, I’m in no doubt.
They stress-tested us too, in the most telling ways. Certainly, four years of traipsing off to airports together in the early hours of the morning to look at a pile of idle bricks in the pouring Spanish rain, only to find that your architect hasn’t bothered to show up for the meeting, either binds you together or makes you hate the sight of each other. Landfalls and litigious neighbours, lying advisers and inept planners: the frustrations have taken their toll on our sanity, but the effect has been less severe since we’ve been able to comfort each other through the ups and downs. We would never have found the limits of each other’s fortitude if not for this crazy idea about a Moorish fort on the top of a hill. Furthermore, Stan would never have bought me that book, 1001 Gardens to See Before You Die, I would never have visited all those wonderful botanic gardens around the world - and this book would never have been written.
And all those things I’ve learned about Stan! How would I ever have known how patient he can be? He who is so impatient that he can’t wait for a meal to cook and would rather eat it raw. And how would I ever have known how responsible he is, if we had never tested the temptation to build illegally? When everyone around him was egging him to crack on and finish the house, he said, ‘No, we can’t build something that our children or grandchildren might have taken away from them because we fucked up.’ How ever would I have known that, if it were not for the planning trials we had been through? And the conflicts between us: the arguments over my slowness and his need to press on, his frustration at my timidity, my concerns about his need to control, our differences of opinion about how to redevelop our London garden, our mutual incomprehension about how to design in space and time. None of these would have surfaced if we had not shared these challenges together.
It was risky to test ourselves. When we reached our limits, there was always the possibility that one of us would have jacked it in, saying, ‘That’s it. Enough’s enough. This is ridiculous. I can’t carry on with you.’ But as it is, we stuck it out. There is hope. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. A bit like a garden.
I’ve realised that it wasn’t the house that was the project. Not for me, anyway. A house is a static object. It waits patiently while you go off and argue with the town hall. It allows you to add a wall, to take away a door, to bash it and rebuild it, but it ne
ver responds. It simply is. A garden, on the other hand, is alive. It acts and is acted upon, it is both subject and object. It does things like slip down the mountain, and it allows us to do things to it, like replanting the slipped earth. It is this very life that means you cannot leave a garden ever. A garden is like a child. You can spend a generation growing it, making sure it can survive without you, but don’t ever think of cutting the apron strings or it will unravel from front to back. A garden without supervision will take off in some inadvisable direction like a young adult with a new driving license. Then where will you be? The proud owner of a wilderness. And that’s every gardener’s nightmare.
Planning a garden is laying a challenge at the feet of the next generation, giving life to a vision, leaving a legacy of beauty and sensuality reminiscent of your first lover.
I’m not even sure that the garden in Spain or the garden in London was the project either. It wasn’t even the marriage that was the project. Life itself is the project and you just have to get on with it, guided by the things you believe in and the circumstances you find yourself in. We all just scrabble along, planting stuff, watching it wither, trying again, celebrating joy at the odd success, making plans, laughing at our pretensions and powerlessness. There’s not much else to be done. You can make all the plans you want, but in the end, you need to take what comes.
I visited The Old Vicarage garden in East Ruston, Norfolk recently and asked Alan Gray, one of the owners, how he had coped with the ups and downs of developing such an enormous and beautiful garden. He and his partner have been there for thirty years and must have faced numerous crises, droughts, storms, disappointments in developing his 32 acres. What advice would he give me, I asked, to remain strong when everything seems set against you? He looked at me warily, wondering if I could take the advice I sought, and then with a grin so handsome that I would have taken anything, he said ‘You just have to stop moaning and get on with it.’ This was just what I needed to hear and though I wanted to seek his wisdom in relation to my marriage as well, thought better of it.
The Gardens That Mended a Marriage Page 25
