When I was 9 years old I watched the Secret Garden. It captured my imagination and for the rest of my childhood longed for a place in nature where no one could find me. I was often up a tree or under a bush hiding and being with the insects, studying them.
The Secret Gardens Exhibition bring together a collection of paintings from the past year of my life. What began as one painting for a retail space inspired by a visit to Abbotsbury Subtropical gardens extended into a series as I remembered how the gardens helped me when I was post-traumatic after the birth of my first child. I felt like a was near a black cloud and knew I had to do whatever I could to stop myself from falling under. My baby needed me. The doctor recommended anti-depressants, but it felt like such a significant time and I wanted to be present with my baby. Other new mums had organised a meet up at the Abbotsbury Gardens and I had such a shift in mood after that day I bought a Garden Pass. Sitting there under the tall trees on a lawn at Abbotsbury I felt held. The trees told me I was going to be ok. They were with me. I could cry and then go back home and tomorrow they would be there again. Whilst the ground seemed to be falling from under me the trees held me up. Another place I visited with my new baby was here at Athelhampton House. Despite the cold winter weather, the garden was still a place of wonder and those yew trees (that have been there for so many years) stood like the pyramids.
And I know that neither of these gardens is a Secret. People know about them but what I don’t think they know is the magical power of a garden. Not only to leave your mortal troubles behind but also to allow yourself to transmute in a garden. To go through a portal, a garden gate or a portico holds a potential for us to become changed by the experience.
Pagan beliefs tell us that to walk between two yew trees was to receive a blessing. That’s why so many yew trees are found in church yards with some of the oldest examples in the UK being up to 5000 years old.
The garden as a link to the spiritual world is the basis of the Christian belief. It all begins in the Garden of Eden when everything was good. The description of the garden of Eden captured my imagination as a Catholic convent girl. And heaven. What is that if not the most beautiful garden? And it is here in these gardens that we can get a taste of the eternal peace that the Christian religion aften promised. The Fall into the mortal world was banishment from the garden. When I see that way we are tearing down the trees and destroying our beautiful garden here on Earth I wonder if we need to write a new creation story? Locked out of peace and thrust into a world distracted by the media and our phones. Anxiety is rife and young people are suffering at record levels. Our parasympathetic systems in our bodies are being tested to the limit as time spent in nature becomes a rare event and staying at home on the WIFI becomes a new normal.
For me the secret is that we don’t need the anti-depressants and the anti-anxiety medication but just need to switch off and turn our attention to the beauty that is found in the outdoor spaces and in ourselves. It might be your own backyard, a wild field or of it might be a larger, older formal garden. But you’re paying attention is the key to the riches on offer. It’s like a portal, tapping into the energy of a beautiful garden has so many benefits.
The trees are literally making the air breathable. The birds are literally making the flowers come out. The rain is giving all the extra nutrients a plant might need.
Not only are all these things valuable but our future depends upon it.
As the Earth temperatures rise to unprecedented levels and disaster events such as fire and floods become more common. There is still a chance in this lifetime to turn it around.
But we in the west must change our behaviours. Mindless consumption must stop and we must slow down and take stock of what we can do as individuals to help preserve the most precious garden we all live in – the Earth.
But the wonders of nature will never make the newspapers. It doesn’t sell products or keep us on our devices and these two states are necessary for the continuation of the capitalist economic system we live within. A system which not only holds little value on the preservation and protection of nature but has been based on its very exploitation and resulting destruction.
In this exhibition I have used what will hopefully become the norm but what some might now call “green” values. The wood is offcuts and scrap. The canvases are saved from the rubbish tip. The frames all second hand. Dinted and scratched I am inviting you into an aesthetic of making do. Of reusing and recycling and the secret that the very joy of your existence is here waiting for you in the beauty of nature. And I hope if you do take one of these paintings home or even a print that it serves as a reminder that the world is beautiful and whether we are going to a beautiful garden in heaven or in the black smoke of hellfire it’s up to us and we can all make a difference because its right now that matters.
If we are able to transform one life with one kindness and caring then we are able to transform many as the ripple effect comes into play. Just look at the dragonfly’s wings touch the surface of a pond, or the wind blow seeds across a meadow or the slugs coming out in the rain.
