I called this "A Garden of Fragments" because I think of it--a small patio garden--as a collection of plants and plantings, of furniture, of "things" from other, or previous, gardens. I imagined a gardener, a woman who is about to enter her garden and sit on the glider and sip tea and eat a cupcake and read some poetry. She has put together this garden from bits and pieces, from what she already owned and from what she got new.
So, silvery in the container beside the glider is an old Christmas tree ornament with a scratched pink surface that picks up the pink of the hellebore flower hanging above it like a tiny umbrella.
The white pillow and the shawl draped over part of the glider are a few years old, and the green cloth and teapot on the wooden bench belonged to her grandmothers. The bench, covered with a thick layer of peeling green paint, looks ancient and has been in her family for two or three generations.
Above, a celadon creamer embellishes a celadon container planted with greenish-white flowers. The creamer is part of a set dating back to the thirties. The plant combination has been used before: there is a cluster of HELLEBORUS 'yellow lady,' more green than yellow, paired with RIBES laurifolium, an evergreen laurel currant, with sweet, pendant, greenish-white flowers. (Also visible are the surprising leaves of ASPLENIUM scolopendrium, the hart's tongue fern.)
A white creamer, and a dusty rose sugar bowl and creamer decorate other containers. And old white door handles nestle beside the hellebore and sweetbox in the rusted so-old-it-is-collapsing bucket.
The screens, rusted and even bleached by exposure to the weather, have been used in other gardens. The camellia is new, but the same one grew in another garden and brightened many gray winters.
And so the garden comes together.
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