Hildegard of Bingen - a Christian mystic, writer, composer, saint and herbalist - called it "viriditas", the physical, mental and spiritual healing power of having greenery around you. Every decade or so since, someone "discovers" that very tangible power again, or gives it a new name, or publishes a study showing that more urban trees in public areas equals less graffiti.
The most recent version is in an article I've just read in New Scientist. It focused not just on "green is good for us", but on the scientific reasons why, as well as exactly what kind of "green power" works best. Apparently we humans are happiest, and the healing power strongest, with scattered park-like trees and lots of different smaller plants and flowers.
If that sounds like your garden, pat yourself on the back, take a cool drink and go and sit there for a while. Take a book, or some kids. Apparently simply having your hands in the soil also helps, so possibly take a spade and plant a tree before summer turns our gardens into midday ovens, or even (I never thought I'd say this at the end of August) plant some flowers and veg. See suggestions below.
New Scientist author Paul Riding quotes a study of gall bladder patients who recovered three times as fast and needed less medication if they looked out on to greenery instead of a brick wall. He quotes medical studies that used machines to measure what Hildegard of Bingen observed with eyes and heart: that being with greenery makes us calmer, with more clarity of thought. Even the smell of soil, the bush or gardens makes us calmer and able to make better decisions.
I won't repeat more of the article here - you can dig it out yourself (pun intended). The studies it reports are all new, but the conclusions have been found many, many times before.
Looking back over my own life, my close friendships have always been with those who love the bush, and/or gardens. Other friendships have withered away (that pun wasn't intended). Even as a small child I'd escape into the bush that was only a row of houses away from our post-war housing estate - Mum's only rule was to be back before dark. I've now lived with this particular bit of bush for nearly half a century, but felt an inseparable part of it from the moment I looked across the valley, not knowing then that my family came from here.
I first fell in love with gardening when I was seven, and my grandmother took me to see her neighbour's garden. Her name was Esther Deans, and she'd soon be venerated for pioneering no-dig gardening in Australia.
I picked a lemon, because I couldn't resist it's golden glow, then said defensively, "It came off in my hand!" Mrs Deans smiled and said, "Of course it did. You'd better take it home."
If you have read this far, I am probably preaching to the converted. You have a garden, or long for one; you know instinctively that humanity needs a garden of Eden around us, to complete us.
I look at the city kids to whom I give writing workshops, who have never seen more "bush" than a holiday resort, and feel a desperate sorrow because they may never know what their lives lack, unless, someone, somehow, can show them what the bush can give them, how a garden can repay every hour or cent a thousand times. I try to give them a taste of it in my books, enough so that they will hunt for what they've lost in play centres with artificial grass, or schools with swimming pools and paved courtyards instead of many trees. But the kids will need the right companion teachers, or they'll be turned off the first time they meet a leech or snake or sunburn, or they plant carrots and only get weeds in return.
Canberra is a "garden city"... except increasingly it's a concrete, paving stone and bitumen one. Thank goodness we still have the hills. And to all still reading this, please plant a tree, and show kids how to climb one, or let them pick your lemons. (Don't climb a lemon tree. It's usually too prickly).
This week I am:
- Planting, because the following veg will grow even when we inevitably get a cold spell: parsley, baby spinach (mid-summer will be too hot for the big-leafed stuff), bok choi, choy sum, kale, baby carrot varieties, and a slow-bolting variety of coriander.
- Cos and mignonette and buttercrunch lettuces can be planted now, as can rocket, radishes and probably silverbeet, though all of them may turn sulky if the weather keeps changing from hot to cold, and go to seed before they've fed you, friends and family.
- Watching for the first snail of spring. We've had the first leech, the first red-bellied black snake, and the echidnas are munching ants and termites. I have yet to see a slimy snail trail - hopefully the warm weather will mean the blue tongued lizards will eat the snails before they eat my veg.
- Picking at least 10 different colours and patterns of hellebore, all grown from seedlings.
- Trying to give away more oranges, but only to people tall enough to pick the ones I can't reach, or patient enough to use the long-handled fruit picker.
- Glorying in plum and hybrid red/yellow stringybark blossom.
- Removing that "second crop of weeds after digging", so that the garden will be relatively weed-free for its new flowers and veg.
