Perfect Stillness
12 June 2023
By: James Lennox
All gardens have their own rhythm. Here at La Corolla, the spring surge has subsided. For a while, every morning when I ventured outdoors, gloves, secateurs and trug at the ready, I would make a very slow round of the garden, merely noting all the changes that had occurred in the previous twenty-four hours. Overwhelming and thrilling all at once.
Well, the rapid growth of April and May has started to slow. The pace of change has gradually eased up. And each year at about the same time, give or take a few days, the moment arrives when everything in the garden seems to hold itself in check, pausing before embarking on the next stage in the drama.
That moment came upon the garden just this week. A hush descended one morning that hadn’t been there the previous day. It felt as though every plant that had been frantically putting on growth up to that point was now holding itself, balanced, precisely where it wanted to be. No leaf unfolded, no petal fell. Perfect stillness.
Everything was standing tall in the herbaceous border – the lupins, verbena, phlomis and linaria, the stachys, lychnis and salvias. The old shrub roses had held a meeting and co-ordinated their displays. Even a few of the trees and shrubs had decided to join in the festivities – the epaulette trees, the stewartias, the hypericums and the hydrangeas all pausing before rushing on towards the same destination.
This moment of stasis in the garden’s annual progression never lasts long. Sometimes just a day, rarely a week. It’s the moment in the year when the garden calls a halt, oblivious to the world beyond its boundaries and the mundane concerns of those who dwell there. There’s a sense of repose, a feeling of calm. The garden revels in contentedness, no matter how briefly.
During this year’s climax to the spring season, I was reminded of nothing so much as the Rose Adagio, that famous sequence in the ballet Sleeping Beauty when the young Princess Aurora accepts a rose from each of her four suitors. After a challenging series of balances, the most nerve-wracking moment arrives as the ballerina stands on pointe, is turned in a circle by the first suitor, releases his hand, still balancing on one foot, before taking the hand of the next suitor without ever coming off pointe. And then repeating the same move for suitors 3 and 4. It’s all about the balance, creating the impression that time has stopped and the ballerina is perfectly poised centre-stage, almost entirely unsupported. The audience holds its breath; the ballerina (hopefully) holds her nerve.
So what’s the connection? Well, the garden in very late spring, like the young princess, is showing off for an audience, in this case the gardener and any lucky visitor. The plants are suddenly aware of their beauty and potential, holding themselves back for just one moment before taking the plunge into the next phase of their life. They’ve grown, put on their finery and are now awaiting a suitor (or a humble bee) before continuing on. The gardener’s only role is to offer the briefest steadying hand, trusting to the garden’s own ability to sustain itself aloft.
But there are, I believe, other parallels between gardens and ballet, the art of gardening and the art of dance – they’re both about display, a company of individuals working together, story-telling, for example. One correspondence in particular stands out – the essence of each is physical movement, an internal impetus normally played out against a background of music, whether Tchaikovsky or birdsong.
A full-length entirely static ballet is almost inconceivable and certainly unwatchable. Equally it’s almost impossible to imagine a garden that never changes.
A gardener or an institutional owner might seek to freeze a garden in time, thus making it a perfectly preserved period piece, but sooner or later (normally sooner), the vital life force that animates the garden breaks through. It’s very simple – plants grow, they keep moving. If you try to stop them, they’ll take offence and die.
On a shorter timescale, measured in months rather than decades, the perfect moment that epitomises each season must give way to the process that builds to the next climax, tempting as it is for the gardener to seek to prolong this highlight. The trick lies in knowing when to let go and allow the drama to move on. And because the garden and its plants are, like a ballet and its dancers, always on the move, any moment of stillness is all the more powerful, arresting, for its very brevity.
As poets seek to remind us, things fall apart. In Asturias, that normally means the rain has returned and, contrary to cricketing tradition, play resumes. Or rather, the garden starts to dance once again.
But first, while the centre still holds, let’s celebrate this brief, perfect moment. The garden is at its finest, its showiest, its most confident. And at times, when the audience consists of just one gardener, he’s left holding his breath, desperate not to break the spell.
