Gardens, Tours and an Old English Word

An overview of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden Tour.

Restoring American Gardens
Item # 99684 		Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940

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The Garden & Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson
Item # 99642 		The Garden & Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson

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  • Topic: Garden Design
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: local gardens, tours, design, Other
  • Date: July 2003

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This past weekend I had a chance to truly see the meaning of “garden” in action. I attended the Santa Fe Botanical Garden’s seventh annual tour of local gardens. There were four, all of which were so different that it was hard choosing my favorite. The difficulty was highlighted even more because in all cases there were gardens within gardens.

The private estates that opened to the public for this event were so large—one was four acres!—that I kept wondering, if I lived at any of them, how would I choose which garden to relax in?

I went with my friend, Anne, who recently has started a quest; she is looking for someway to transform her backyard. So for several hours we wandered the grounds looking and remarking on various characteristics.

I was particularly charmed by a re-circulating stream and pond under shade trees in the garden of Richard and Nedra Matteucci on Canyon Road. The house dates back to 1768 and the garden was completely renovated ten years ago. Lush and cool, it made me want to linger the rest of the afternoon.

All the gardens, though, offered a surge of excitement. It’s wonderful to see how this arid land of ours can be transformed. It takes imagination as well as the perfect placement of plants. But Anne came up with another observation.

“You know, walls really add something to a garden, don’t they?” she mused. And who knows how this happens, but her words led me to my trusty handbook of root words. Lo and behold. Should we be surprised at where the word “garden” comes from?

The Indo-European root, which is as close to Sanskrit as we’re going to get, is ‘gher,’ meaning to grasp and enclose. Derivatives include gird, girdle, girth. As the word moved northward and became incorporated into Old English, it became ‘gyrdan’ (garden) and ‘geard’ (yard and orchard).

So. No wonder the garden tour sparked such a visceral response in both me and Anne. First, there is something comforting about any garden. Second, being enclosed adds even more to that feeling. It is one of being protected and safe, and I certainly think the goal of any garden is to remove ourselves from the world for a time, to feel that protection and safety. Gardens are places to refresh our inner selves.

I was particularly interested in seeing Elspeth Bobbs’s garden. I once had a roommate who helped tend her place. This was the four-acre estate. Talk about gardens within gardens. We got to tour the house as well, and my feeling was there were rooms within rooms, too.

In a written statement about her garden, Ms. Bobbs said her philosophy about gardening is one of passion, and after putting in two perennial borders, she said, ”...from them I learned the way to go is raised beds and good imported soil.”

She bought the house in 1967 and has been transforming the grounds ever since. In keeping with the times, she’s even installed a labyrinth outlined in heavy metal. No city water is used on any of the gardens. All water is caught in cisterns and distributed with a drip irrigation system.

Throughout the afternoon, Anne and I saw formal gardens, herb gardens, vegetable gardens, a moon garden, a knot garden and a zodiac garden. It’s fun to visit other gardens. By the time I got home I was all fired up to get back to my own. Like Ms. Bobbs’, it’s teaching me the way to go.

And I know the garden walls informed Anne about a few things too. I could see her mind reworking her backyard. And that’s why it’s so much fun to see other people’s gardens. No matter what kind of plants are used or what the focus is, all gardens come from the root word ‘gher.’ And that’s why we all understand them. A garden is a place we can be contained.