Gardener's Gift

A Gardener’s Gift

The garden would have been ugly and empty, but from the hands of the old Japanese gardener had come a gift, the gift to be as beautiful as the great garden of Japan itself. Before, it had been asleep, it had been waiting for his feet to touch its grasses. Then, the garden had been a square of nothing, but now it was something. The gardener from Japan had taken this barren space, with here weeds and there wild grass, and tamed it. At the gardener’s loving touch, the garden’s loneliness and sorrow shrunk away and it grew fertile and full of life.

A large shrine that backed onto the front of the garden. Here the Japanese gardener would spend a lot of his time. He would think about what to do to the garden now, he would think about it in the afternoon and in the evening, but at night he would leave the garden on its own. As he left, the garden asked him what he had thought of, but he would never say. The next morning he would arrive, having bought whatever he needed, and start. He did not finish though, because for some of the tasks he had to have weeks, months or years. If he was hasty, he would spoil the garden, and he had little else to do if he was not in the garden. He had not shown it to anybody, and he did not share his secret, but kept it to himself.

In the beginning, the garden was shy and slow, and by the end it was fast, but not foolish, for the gardener taught it wisdom. The garden readily studied from him how it should be in each of the four seasons, and it had the patience to stay to that scheme. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, when one season stopped it would go on into the next. The garden had been a simple, open space, but it was separated with screens of greenish bamboo into smaller, more complex spaces. The gardener dug shallow valleys and made high hills, and soft, fresh green grass was sown over them. Steady timber benches were hidden in between shrubs and bushes for the bold to stumble upon.

Those beds of bushes and shrubs were where the deciduous Megi barberry bush was, with the sucking Japanese aralia, the yellow-orange flowered Japanese azalea, the Mokusei with its tea-like scent, the purple Hana iris, the star magnolia with its shiny red fruit and the Nanten bamboo shoots. The king of trees, the Momiji maple, lived in the garden as did the queen of trees, the silver-white willow tree. The tall Hinoki cypress going straight up as if it were a sword, the coniferous copper-bronze Sugi cedar, the Icho tree with leaves like the golden fans the geisha use, the brother and sister trees the green goyo and black kuro-matsu pines.

The child of the king and queen of trees was there too, the Sakura tree which sprouts cherries and pink flowers that it then sheds. They are spread and blown about and will sink to the garden’s hard ground as if they are confetti. The gardener built a stone bridge for the water that strode through the garden to course below, here a dark green as it went on moss and mildew and there a light grey as it streamed above hard, wet stones and down a cloudy waterfall. Its source was a stone with its middle bored out, from where it went on its way as a stream. Then it finished by being shown through a series of bamboo see-saws. When one was full up it would see-saw over and empty its water into the second, the third and on into a deep, cloudy well where it stopped and waited to be sucked up to the waterfall at the start. On its way, the water shouted and sang, and the trees who saw this made no sound, but they danced.

Then there was the bright white gravel, swept by the gardener to seem as though it was a sea. Out of this sea of gravel rose stones, chosen for their black, uneven feel and size. These the gardener used to make the shape of the islands of Japan, where he was from. The garden was awake and moving but serene and quiet, a garden where, if you sat for a long time, you would find solutions to problems. From the garden’s soft whispers you would get new energy, and stale spirituality would be reborn. There was no hate in the garden, no humans but the gardener, though birds, beasts and bees there were many of.

The gardener stood by the shrine and sighed. His work had paid off and the garden was joyful, all because of a Japanese gardener. Like what was inside the garden, the Japanese gardener was not permanent. Everything in the garden was temporary, stuff died off, but more were added to the garden in their right times. He was now old and short and bent, and he had to have a thin bamboo stick, but he stayed with the garden because it needed him. He needed it too, he thought. To the garden, the gardener had given a gift, and he could feel the garden wanting to give its gift on to somebody else. He thought a goodbye, and went out through the garden’s bamboo gate for the last time.

The garden did not think of the gardener for a while, because it was too busy getting ready for the next season. Suddenly, it missed the loudness of the gardener’s speech and the skittering of his bamboo stick. It gave a cry, and started to seek for him, but he was nowhere close. It stopped. A human being had come through the gate. It shouted out to the garden.

‘Grandfather?’ The garden whispered to the boy.

‘Welcome.’

‘What- who are you?’ The boy frowned.

‘I am the garden.'

'Aah- I am the boy.'

'Are you my gardener?’ The boy smiled and spoke.

‘OK, I’ll be your gardener!’

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