The Garden

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

For Freeman Patterson, who lives at Shamper’s Bluff, New Brunswick,
gardening is not a hobby but an essential part of living. His planting
arrangements, often made unconsciously, are simply ones that “feel
right,” like the path through wild daffodils that leads to an old,
unpainted barn. Patterson’s garden grows wilder as he grows older.
There are no straight paths. He experiments with new plants and puts
“strangers” together, just as he does with dinner guests. Gardens,
he believes, are metaphors for how we live and what we value, places
that teach us about ourselves. Both text and photographs are implicitly
spiritual. One paragraph that begins “A hush pervades every part of my
garden on damp, misty spring days” continues with a reflection on his
sense of connection with the natural world, of self returning to
wholeness.

Photographs and anecdotes are delightfully interspersed with personal
memories, gardening tips, and family jokes. Some photographs are
profoundly spiritual, while others are as dramatic as a burning barn;
one such is a view of huge patches of red rhododendrons, with
Patterson’s house on a rising slope in the distance. Other photographs
show the startling changes that the passage of only a few weeks can
bring to a flower bed. The first, taken in spring, shows a single red
poppy blooming among scores of tight green buds. The second features a
riotous bed of black-eyed Susans. Patterson comments that our gardens,
like our lives, are always changing. The transition reminds him of what
he has lost and of what he calls “the paradoxical activity” of
gardening, where happiness and sadness balance one another and are
interdependent. The human spirit understands this paradox, he writes,
“accepts it, and rejoices in it … Changes, transitions and
developments bring meaning to our lives.”

Patterson has worked in photography since 1965, most notably with the
Still Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada. In
1984, he co-founded the Namaqualand Photographic Workshops in South
Africa. His numerous awards include the Lifetime Achievement Award from
the North American Nature Photography Association and the Order of
Canada (1985).

The Garden melds poetry and philosophy, meditation and prayer. It is a
beautiful and deeply spiritual book for all ages.