A new book by Mulmur author Brian Bixley, Minding the Garden, is a book about a garden, written by a gardener, but it is not a gardening book.
Bixley insists, whatever the evidence he is a gardener whose hands are often in the soil.
With his wife Maureen, the Bixleys are the minders of Lilactree Farm, a property that welcomes visitors during tours and open garden days.
“Though I write about the garden here at Lilactree Farm I use that as a way of providing my credentials, as it were, for writing about other aspects of the garden, in particular the relationship of the garden to the other arts,” said Bixley.
The property was purchased in 1966 and throughout the years, garden diaries were kept.
“Did we see the landscape capabilities of the property? Not at all; the very concept would have been meaningless to us,” writes Bixley. “Neither of us had a gardening background, we were busy urbanites who saw the old farmhouse as a potential oasis of tranquility and, simultaneously, a place for great feats and animated conversation, a bourgeois Bloombury-on-the-Boyne. But to demonstrate how rapidly we were absorbing our new natural surroundings, we set up a birdfeeder, put out some seed. That birdfeeder changed our lives.”
The book is a collection of garden notes; more about the consumption of the garden than the production of the garden, writes Bixley. For a dozen years or so, he has been sending out such notes to friends, neighbours, family and others, as the garden’s audience grew.
It wasn’t until about three years ago that he started thinking about packaging the notes into a book.
“Gradually, I was able then to write more and more about what I saw as the fascinating complex relationships between gardening – the process of being in the garden – and what I was hearing when I went to a concert or what I thought of when I read a book,” said Bixley.
It can work both ways, he said, in that the fragrance of the Lindens flowering can summon a passage from an Iris Murdoch novel he read 40 years ago, or a concert can transport him to a time of contemplation while in the garden.
“That’s why I call it Minding the Garden, the garden is the agent provocateur of the mind but it also works in the other direction. That I see a painting and the painting itself makes me think of something that is happening in the garden, or something that is happening in the garden makes me think of a book or a concert,” said Bixley. “That is really the central part of the book and which makes it, from my vain perspective, a book which is quite unlike any other gardening book that I actually know.”
The book’s photography is by Des Townshend, who splits his time between Orangeville and his native Ireland. Bixley said Townshend visited the garden one day and asked if he could take some photographs. Bixley consented and asked that Townshend share a few of his favourites. That was the beginning of a partnership that saw Townshend return many times to photograph the garden throughout the seasons.
“It’s true for all photographers who come to the garden, they see things with different eyes…,” said Bixley. “Des had seized on aspects of the garden, perhaps a close-up of a particular flowering plant, perhaps a space where the light was playing tricks that I hadn’t noticed.”
He said the cover photo captures perfectly the mood that he wanted; an invitation for someone to come and sit and think.
Minding the Garden: Lilactree Farm is published by Friesen Press. It is available online and is coming to BookLore in Orangeville.
Due to the pandemic, Lilactree Farm is not holding its usual open garden days but visits may still be possible. For more information, contact Brian Bixley at lilactreefarm@gmail.com.