My Garden of Voices
Matthew Melendez
As a choral conductor, it’s probably not surprising that my garden is full of voices.
I hear my (appropriately-named) friend Linda cackle with delight when the pink lilies of the valley are in bloom, because we were together when we discovered them. She had just been saying at lunch how she’d had them once, but hadn’t been able to keep them going, nor had she ever been able to find them again. Yet, within the hour, there we were in a small private nursery, each holding one of their last two starts. Now, swathes of them fill entire beds outside of my little boy’s bedroom window.
I hear Susan, a spiritual friend whose presence is innately soothing, when her hardy geraniums explode in masses of cornflower blue early each summer, and former business partner Lil when smelling the Hidcote lavender we bought (and made crème brûlée with) 25 years ago. Former landlord Paula’s naughty giggle rattles between my ears when her naked ladies flaunt their bawdy leafless bloom stalks, as does the clacking of Mrs. Morris’s ill-fitting dentures when her jacks-in-the-pulpit grow the giant striped hoods that always made her exclaim.
It wasn’t intentional, but over the decades, our garden has become as much an orchestrated choir of these voices as it is a curated collection of herbs, shrubs, and blossoms. And this is why it’s been all the more comforting during the pandemic. Our garden is more than the stories and laughs each plant evokes. It is also their seasonal reliability (even when that means being reliably high maintenance). The world beyond may be upside-down, but the snowdrops and crocus are right on schedule, the plum blossoms are poised, waiting for that first warm, spring day, and the new lettuces are putting on growth.
Stealthily and joyfully, my garden has become so much more than a plot of land and a collection of plants. It is memory, beauty, inspiration, respite, and refuge. And as my garden of voices, and our first round of submissions, both show: a garden is also a reflection of how we relate to the world. It is a canvas upon which we project and process.
Happily, many of the voices in our garden are still just a phone call away. But each year, sadly, there are more I will only ever hear again in my head and heart. Like the pandemic, I had no idea at the time the kind of roots those voices were putting down, how long they’d actually be with me, how much they’d change my landscape. But now, having become established, my garden of voices has taught me how to find beauty even amongst the thorns.
As we end one year of pandemic isolation and enter a second, I hope our stories here help you do the same.
I hear my (appropriately-named) friend Linda cackle with delight when the pink lilies of the valley are in bloom, because we were together when we discovered them. She had just been saying at lunch how she’d had them once, but hadn’t been able to keep them going, nor had she ever been able to find them again. Yet, within the hour, there we were in a small private nursery, each holding one of their last two starts. Now, swathes of them fill entire beds outside of my little boy’s bedroom window.
I hear Susan, a spiritual friend whose presence is innately soothing, when her hardy geraniums explode in masses of cornflower blue early each summer, and former business partner Lil when smelling the Hidcote lavender we bought (and made crème brûlée with) 25 years ago. Former landlord Paula’s naughty giggle rattles between my ears when her naked ladies flaunt their bawdy leafless bloom stalks, as does the clacking of Mrs. Morris’s ill-fitting dentures when her jacks-in-the-pulpit grow the giant striped hoods that always made her exclaim.
It wasn’t intentional, but over the decades, our garden has become as much an orchestrated choir of these voices as it is a curated collection of herbs, shrubs, and blossoms. And this is why it’s been all the more comforting during the pandemic. Our garden is more than the stories and laughs each plant evokes. It is also their seasonal reliability (even when that means being reliably high maintenance). The world beyond may be upside-down, but the snowdrops and crocus are right on schedule, the plum blossoms are poised, waiting for that first warm, spring day, and the new lettuces are putting on growth.
Stealthily and joyfully, my garden has become so much more than a plot of land and a collection of plants. It is memory, beauty, inspiration, respite, and refuge. And as my garden of voices, and our first round of submissions, both show: a garden is also a reflection of how we relate to the world. It is a canvas upon which we project and process.
Happily, many of the voices in our garden are still just a phone call away. But each year, sadly, there are more I will only ever hear again in my head and heart. Like the pandemic, I had no idea at the time the kind of roots those voices were putting down, how long they’d actually be with me, how much they’d change my landscape. But now, having become established, my garden of voices has taught me how to find beauty even amongst the thorns.
As we end one year of pandemic isolation and enter a second, I hope our stories here help you do the same.