fantasy garden

In consideration of the eventuality that I one day find myself possessed of a plot of land, some unspoken-for time and the spiritual qualities required for growing a garden, I am now considering what I would like to plant, and thought I’d better make some notes for possible future reference. Let’s say it is in a Mediterranean climate.

I would definitely want some trees. A small olive tree from which I would harvest olives to cure, and then soak in water to remove some of the salt before serving them with lemon, olive oil (bought) and herbs (grown). A pomegranate tree. An almond tree. A tree of grafted together citrus, like the one that grew in our neighbor’s yard when I was growing up. I would want lemons, limes, oranges, pomellos, and kumquats. Wouldn’t that be a magic tree? I wonder if it is possible. An avocado tree and a mango tree.

That might be too many trees, I’m not sure, since I don’t know how big this piece of land I might one day have might be.

Another dimension of the garden would be plants grown for making bouquets, particularly hardy ones with long colorful flowering seasons. I think a big grafted-together bush of every-color bougainvillea would be wonderful. The flowers come in such luscious hues, and their silky-papery texture sprinkled with tiny white stars is so attractive. I would train the branches to intermingle from a young age so that the bush would look like one huge bouquet. If there were no children around, I might also have oleander, which has some fine subtle colors.

Chrysanthemums head the list of flowers. I especially like the variegated ones, which add depth to a color combination, some of the spidery ones and the big ones that you seen in Japanese fabric designs. Carnations follow, small ones in delicate shades, like yellow, peach, cream, pink. I have a feeling baby’s breath belongs to the carnation family, but I’m not all that crazy about it or the way it smells. What I’d want instead would be Geralton wax. I think I’ve seen two shades, an creamy one and a pink one. I’d like both. O yes, and lilies. The seem to grow well in this climate. I don’t have any blue ones, I’ll have to think of some.

Another section would be devoted to edibles. Starting with rocket, peas, small wrinkly picking cucumbers, big fat sweet tomatoes like I’ve never tasted since the summer I ate them inside my grandpa’s tomato teepee. I’d also grow herbs, starting with thyme, mint, rose geranium and dill. Fennel would be nice, and lettuce and radish. I would grow spinach, potatoes and carrots to eat as babies all year long. Yum!

I think I’d like to mix all the plants together, the veggies could grow with the flowers and pretend to be ornamental.