Who needs meditation when you have a garden to potter in?

I don’t think it’s pottering. Though, maybe it is. There is something unfocused, but not unpleasant, in pottering. It normally involves knocking about a garden or a shed, or a combination of both. And age. Pottering is associated with people a bit blown around and yellowed by time.  

So maybe it is pottering – somewhat. I find myself in the garden often now, sometimes not doing a whole lot of anything, just nudging along, tweaking a growth here, trimming back a plant there, checking if I’d left something in the shed (I hadn’t. It was in the drawer in the kitchen). We’re lucky to have a garden. For a few years it was either a work site or on hold until it became a work site.

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This was related to major pipeworks by Scottish Water to prevent neighbourhood flooding. Our house was the nexus. I mention such banal domestic goings on because in a time of collapsing private water provision, Scottish Water, a publicly owned utility, shows there is a possible other way, and one that can deliver positive results nationwide. 

The garden has been reinstated and keeps drawing me like a moth. Early in the morning, when the magpies are rattling loudest, or crows fight with parakeets that roost nearby, or late when it is so still and if you stand long enough you hear an owl from the trees way beyond, there is something of being present in it. I’m not a gardener, though I increasingly enjoy planting and shifting things around.

I could bore you about my plans for the crocosmia and the salvia salgoon. I moved a Japanese maple from the front to the back – the internet said it would be fine if I took precautions – and it’s already prospering and sorting out some ground water. I’ve become keen on seeing what Monty Don says are the jobs for the weekend. And it was on Gardener’s World that Simon appeared with his “one-acre patch of paradise”, in the middle of Herefordshire. 

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Twenty-five years ago, Simon said, he took this ground and started developing it into a nature reserve and wildflower garden. It has evolved over time. Simon took the cameras round and got excited as he described the surprise of the plants that arrive and the changing colours of a dragonfly. Simon has motor neurone disease and now needs help to keep the pathways open. He makes his garden sound like the most remarkable spot.

He quotes Blake: “To see the world in a grain of sand/and heaven in a wildflower/ hold infinity in the palm of your hand/and eternity in an hour,” and then, his long frame doubling up in his mobility scooter because of the ravages of that horrible disease, says, “Before long, a whole afternoon would have drifted by, and my mind is full of the wonder of it all.” 

Which is rather beautiful and a little heartbreaking. And I suppose at some point something gets you. Big Grow, led by Big Issue director Parveen Bird, is working on ways to help transform communities through urban gardening. Learning skills and sustainable food growth is at the heart of it. But also, there is something else. 

Frequently, a milky cataract of the mind can grip and stop us seeing straight. When I water the plants, I could use the hose. But I like to use the watering can, to move up and down from the tap, steady and repetitively, my dog matching me step by step, until the cataract breaks. 

That is, as Simon says, the wonder of it all. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue.Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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