"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot," wrote Thomas Edward Brown (1830-97), "wot" meaning "knows" - though why could he not have said that? A troublesome thing, too, it can be; tyrannical even, making slaves of its caretakers/ owners. It may even drive them to almost demented labours, changing what was lovely last year into something they find even lovelier this year. Or think they do, until, on reflection, they feel that this bush clashes with its background and needs to be replaced or at least moved. In short, no garden is ever finished. There is always a new variation from season to season or year to year. You may find it odd, but the gardener knows in his or her heart that what makes gardening so fascinating is just that urge to change all the time. There are stately gardens which have remained stately in their unchanging patterns, but your average individual family gardener is the most restless (or original and experimental) of beings. To some it's a bit like going to the gym. It is action, it fulfils an artistic need and at the same time a physical one. Grey in the face at the end of a long summer evening's toil, the gardener, male or female, will reply to urgent calls for a break from the family: "But I like it. I like the exercise. It's good for me." Well, it is good for the blooming, expanding garden centre business.
The trouble with getting too concerned with action is that so little time can be given to sitting back and just enjoying the results. To some, of course, this perpetual motion is what secretly draws them on. Do you ever hear a friend say about his or her garden: "Well, I think we've got it right at last"? But it's right only for as long as you look at it. Soon, when the leaves turn or the flowers begin to fade, the catalogues will be perused again or the garden centre will be visited. Or opinions will be canvassed around the family to support the idea of cutting this away, planting under that tree some original bulbs for the spring or paving an open space rather than leaving it to grass. (One of the biggest changes in suburban Dublin is the conversion of the small front garden into a tiled or bricked area.) If you have a big garden or an acre or two in the country, you get huge enthusiasms for this or that tree. Wonderful, patriotic to help in the releafing of Ireland. But then you realise you've lost your view. Down come some. Up goes something else. It never ends. Which is the way it should be.