The English garden I will remember forever is the one Chris made. A large terraced garden inside old walls, long borders running their length, and at the centre a stone fountain of three tiers, roses and lavender gathered around it. To the left, a long border of flowers he had chosen with great care, the hyacinth among them. In the morning the air there was green and crisp and faintly floral, and the longer you stood the more it changed, turning sweet and earthy as you breathed it in. In spring I would lift some into the pots in the entrance porch, where their scent welcomed the season before anything else could.
Chris trained as a garden designer at Inchbald, and the garden is what happens when a real love of horticulture meets the discipline of formal design. He thought in seasons, so there was always something coming into colour. He designed for beauty, and he designed for fragrance, which is not a thing most people think to do. There was always something to make you pause and inhale: showy pink magnolia leaking its perfume, roses each with a scent of its own, set against the sharper note of lavender, orange and white oriental lilies, the wisteria that clung to the frame above the dining table.
We kept bees, which I love and respect, even if I am slightly allergic to their company. Dragonflies came to the little pond. Birds nested in the trees, and their song through an open window was one of the most therapeutic sounds I know. We had a trampoline dug into the lawn, and I can still see the children springing up from it as if from nowhere, appearing for a moment above the flowerbeds and dropping back down among them.
The garden was healing. There were seasons when I needed it to be, when walking its length was no small thing, and it gave back everything it had: the birds, the green, the flowers. I would stop on the benches along the way and take it all in, as though I were seeing it for the first time.
