Sometimes a gardener learns more about the craft from a novice than a professional. I have always felt that teaching my class at Berkshire Botanical Garden on herbaceous plants is more of a gift to me than to my students, as it allows me to see the world afresh—and to fall in love with certain plants all over again as I opine both on their virtues and the challenges of growing them. And I find I can also learn from someone whose work is completely distanced from horticulture. For example, I just read Keith McNally’s memoir “I Regret Almost Everything,” about his success as a restaurateur and a stroke he suffered that left him with slurred speech and difficulty communicating, and it inspired me to think anew about how to approach the landscape.
McNally, whose restaurants Odeon, Café Luxembourg, and Balthazar defined much of my life in the last century when I resided in New York, is surprising in his insights about space, the creative process, and how biography informs what we desire and take comfort in. Besides convincing me of my need to read more Auden, McNally talks about the building of his restaurant spaces and his homes in a manner that can apply to great garden-making. His approach to travel does the same.
In his travels to Afghanistan and India, as well as a trip to Montana’s Glacier National Park, he comes to the realization that the most contemplative walks are not those through the grandest landscapes but through more ordinary surroundings. A walk in the English countryside is more likely to inspire our thoughts than the grand view from the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. The ordinary, exactly because it is not overwhelming, allows our minds to drift—and to take in beauty. It occurred to me that gardens that work less on wowing us versus welcoming us may be the spaces we should hope to create. I have often felt that gardens packed full of endless flowers in endless colors are more tiring than they are refreshing, and now I realize is it because they leave space for me to just be me. The seedheads of a grass in bloom can be more moving than a bed of lilies and dahlias in peak bloom.
When McNally added on to his house in Martha’s Vineyard, he worked hard to avoid removing two trees that sat near the house. Somehow, I had imagined that they were two grand old specimens—memory serves that they were catalpas or bean trees—that had been there for generations, but a photo in the book showed them to be younger trees. I imagine he liked the idea that they framed the house and the new porch addition, and was as excited about what they would become as what they were now. It reminded me of the tulip trees that framed Monticello. They were not big in Jefferson’s time, but they still signified that the house sat within a landscape and they provided a pathway for guests arriving at the house. They took on stature as time went by, eventually, unfortunately, succumbing to old age.
Plants can inspire us by their scale or beauty, or they can play a role in creating a seamless landscape locked in time by our memory and love of place. Like the old art deco clock that has sat above the bar at the Odeon since its opening decades ago, they do not need to call attention to themselves, but simply to comfort us by reminding us that they are there.
I hope to garden with the same sense of humility and purpose and, contrary to the title of Mr. McNally’s book, regret nothing.
A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
