July 09 2008

Text By Greg Fallis

The Irish have a saying (the Irish always have a saying): Coinnigh do gàrradh agus coinneoidh an gàrradh thú. Look after your garden and your garden will look after you. Very sensible, that.

A garden, of course, isn't just a spot where you grow vegetables for the table. A garden is also where we go to relax, to enjoy the bountiful beauty of nature, to reflect on the world and our oft-uncertain place in it. A garden is a sanctuary.

But what is required to create a garden? There are gardens in Japan consisting of nothing more than artfully arranged stones in a patch of raked sand. There are water gardens grown in ponds and sculpture gardens in museums. In an old manuscript the venerable Kai Lung speaks of wandering "unchecked through a garden of bright images." And isn't that what we have here? It may look like a wall, but it's also an urban sanctuary...a garden of bright images through which our weary eye may wander unchecked.

It's probably just a coincidence that the Irish term gàrradh can mean both 'garden' and 'wall.' Clever folk, the Irish.