Writing the Walled Garden

Blogs

I write a regular series of Blogs on Poetry and Writing, please check back to see the latest posts.

1 / Why a Walled Garden?

It can be easier to start a piece of writing than finish it, as I found a few years ago with my book Making the Most of Mid-life. Read more...

2 / Walled garden Writing Exercise

The Walled Garden image is so fruitful for me that it has become the heart of this website. What might the image say to you? Read More...

Why a Walled Garden?

It can be easier to start a piece of writing than finish it, as I found a few years ago with my book Making the Most of Mid-life (find out more about my book here).

I had reached my final chapters and I desperately needed more contributing voices. And then, through my freelance writing for the Church Times, Manchester Diocese put me in touch with Christine Mullins, recently ordained in the Church of England as both Deacon and Priest at the same time - without the usual year’s gap between the two. Her story became a Church Times feature and a transforming element in my mid-life book journey.

When I met Christine in November 2006, she was making a Christmas clerical shirt, its bright red background patterned with Christmas puddings and sleigh-bells. ‘I thought it would be rather fun,’ she told me. There was certainly cause for celebration. This was a Christmas she had not expected to see. Back in May, 45 year-old Christine was two months away from ordination when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given six months to live. The diagnosis was traumatic. As Christine said, ’You live life without boundaries, and then all of a sudden, the walls close right in.’

Christine intended to withdraw from her upcoming Curate’s post, but her prospective Incumbent was unwilling to take up her suggestion to look for someone else. ’As far as I’m concerned, I already have a Curate,’ he told her. So Christine decided to ‘go for it.’

She eventually served two years of her Curacy at Christ Church, Brunswick. Her cancer was in remission at the time I met her. ‘It’s as though I’m living in a walled garden,’ she told me. ‘The boundaries are still there but there is space to move and grow things.’

Christine’s walled garden image of living creatively on the other side of traumatic transition made a deep impact on me. As well as being part of my book’s last chapters, it felt like an obvious image for the cover. If we could find the right one. My cover designer at SPCK was Italian. Her concept of a walled garden was too continental terrace for me, and my ideas were too Victorian cottage for her. We seemed to be at an impasse, till she sent me an image which resonated with me immediately. It was a view through an arch looking down towards a bench.

Shortly afterwards I visited my widowed mother in Surrey. When I showed her the image, she astonished me by saying , ‘Well, we know where that is, don’t we?’ She recognised it as taken at Polesden Lacey, the National Trust stately home and gardens just a few miles away, a place my parents had loved to visit over the years. My father’s ashes - and now my mother’s too - rest in the grounds there.

Walled gardens have stayed with me ever since. They are a rich image of life and perhaps aspects of it we want to take time to cultivate - our work, passions, relationships. I love visiting them wherever I can and seeing what each unique garden has to say to me at that time. The most recent memorable one I visited was at Raby Castle, where I was struck by how its modest entrance opened out into a more and more spacious place - perhaps an encouragement not to make assumptions when it seems as though life is narrowing down.

Approaching aspects of life as tending a garden is a gentler way of thinking of life than as an exercise in productivity. The walled garden reminds me of:

Uniqueness and variety - no two are the same.
Different tasks - planting, pruning, digging over
Different seasons. Some things fruit or flower at different times. They also go through autumn and winter as part of the gardening process.
A need to prioritise - I can rework and re-design my garden, but only within its walls. I cannot endlessly add things. Overcrowding does not help plants flourish.
A need for balance - my garden needs space around what is growing. This may include space for rest as well as work.
A call to nurture . Walled gardens give protection for growth. The walls also support for plants and trees that need a warmer environment
A need for boundaries - a walled garden is private space. Where are the gates and doors that allow outsiders in? Will they be locked or open?
A need for patience. A garden is not an instant producer. It takes time to yield its best.

Walled Garden Writing Exercise

The Walled Garden image is so fruitful for me that it has become the heart of this website. What might the image say to you?

Take your life as a whole or a particular aspect of it, and write about it as a walled garden. You might want to refer to the points above to suggest ways of approaching this. You might even want to map it out as a design.

Think about what state or season your garden is in. What is flowering? What needs to be pruned, or even dug out? Are there particular areas that need some attention? Tasks you avoid but need to do?

When you have finished, re-read what you have written and note down your upcoming priority gardening tasks.

Gazing at Gladstone..

'I’ve walked past these pictures so many times. I thought I knew them. But I realise I didn’t.’ So confessed a member of my monthly journalling group at Gladstone’s Library.

The initial exercise I had asked them to do was simple: Take a wander down the building’s corridors and public rooms till you find a picture on the wall that catches your attention. Stop and gaze at it. What do you notice ? And what word or words express your response to what you see? Come back to our meeting room and writer five minutes, using this encounter as a prompt to start putting words on the page.

I usually begin our group’s session with some sort of free-writing exercise. It helps us ‘land’ together in our writing venue, leaving behind the business of the week and even our journey to North Wales. As we clear the decks of the concerns we are carrying, we can focus fully on our session.

I was unsure how this particular exercise would work. Unsurprisingly, the walls of Gladstone’s Library are populated by words and images of the life and times of the man himself. To what extent would this Victorian statesman connect with where we were coming from today? I need not have worried.

One journaller was drawn to a picture of Gladstone meeting Queen Victoria. She found herself wondering about their conversations and the questions the Queen might have had for her Prime Minister. As she wrote, she found herself moving from questions about the picture to some questions she had for herself, ending with a reflection that was ‘very pertinent to where I am now in life.’

She said that she had no idea that the writing would take her in that direction. ‘If you’d asked me to write directly about what’s going on for me I couldn’t have done it. I don’t think these insights would have come out,’

Simply paying attention to what is in front of us helps us let go of other pre-occupations. As we do so, we allow a creative space to open up that can process these concerns more fruitfully. Our issues may re-emerge in our writing with fresh insight, even though it can initially feel that we have left them behind to focus on something completely different .

As we start to write, our issues can slip back in gently through the side-door, arriving with a new wisdom and clarity that we would not have received had we gone head-to-head with them.

This may be something you would like to try. Slow down and choose something external to look at - a piece of artwork, an object in the natural world. Let something about it catch your attention and tune in to how it is impacting you. When you are ready, write for a few minutes, using what you have noted as a starting point, but letting the writing take you wherever it wants to go.

Afterwards, re-read what you have written and see what you notice. At the very least, you will have slowed yourself down to the pace of the present moment. But you may also discover that a seemingly random starting point has led you right to the heart of the matter.