Among Flowers (14 page)

As I walked and observed, each plant, be it tree, shrub, or herbaceous perennial, seemed perfect in its setting or in its sighting. I was in fact looking at Nature, or the thing called so, and I was also looking at a garden. The garden is an invention, the garden is an awareness, a self-consciousness, an artifice. We think and feel that we are making something natural when we make a garden, something that, if come upon unexpectedly, is a pleasure to behold; something that banishes the idea of order and hard work and disappointments and sadness, even as the garden is sometimes made up of nothing but all that.

Eden is never far from the gardener's mind. It is The Garden to which we all refer, whether we know it or not. And it is forever out of reach. As I walked up and down the terrain in the foothills of the Himalaya looking for plants appropriate for growing in the garden I am now (even now, for the garden is ongoing, and a stop to it means death) making in Vermont, the strangeness of my situation was not lost to me. Vermont, all by itself should be Eden and gardenworthy enough. But apparently, I do not find it so. I seem to believe that I will find my idyll more a true ideal, only if I can populate it with plants from another side of the world.

I
would like to thank Jeffery Posternak especially, especially. And also, Philip Fisher and Elaine Scarry. And also Annie Shawn and Harold Shawn. And also Uncle Sandy and Aunt Annie. And also Wayne Winterrowd and Joe Eck. And also Sunam and Thile and Mingma. And also William Bartram, Joseph Hooker, Frank Smythe, Roy Lancaster, Daniel J. Hinkley and Sue and Bleddyn Wynn-Jones. And also Larry Porges, whose kindness and skill will not be forgotten.

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