The Things I Never Get Used To | Marcus Bergin's Garden Notebook
After more than twenty years as a gardener, Marcus Bergin reflects on the everyday moments in nature that still fill him with a sense of wonder.
NATURE & WILDLIFE
Marcus Bergin
5/8/20242 min read
The Things I Never Get Used To
After more than twenty years as a gardener, there are still moments that stop me in my tracks.
People sometimes ask whether gardening ever becomes repetitive.
It's a fair question.
After all, there are only so many lawns to mow, hedges to cut and borders to weed. From the outside, it must look as though one day simply blends into the next.
The truth is quite the opposite.
There are things I still haven't got used to.
Every spring, I'm quietly amazed that bare branches somehow become green again. It doesn't matter how many times I've seen it happen; there's always a moment when I notice that first fresh leaf catching the sunlight and think, "Here we go again."
It feels familiar.
Yet somehow it still feels like a small miracle.
I don't think I'll ever tire of watching a seed become a plant. You place something no bigger than a fingernail into the soil, water it, wait patiently, and a little while later, it begins to grow. We know the science behind it, of course, but that doesn't make it any less remarkable.
Perhaps we've become so used to seeing nature at work that we've forgotten how extraordinary it really is.
The same is true of wildlife.
I've lost count of the number of times I've been working in a garden when everything suddenly falls silent. The birds stop singing, even for just a few seconds, and you instinctively look up because you know something has changed. A sparrowhawk glides overhead, almost without a sound, and then, just as quickly, the garden finds its voice again.
Nobody taught me that.
The garden did.
Then there are the moments that seem almost impossible to explain.
The smell of the air just before rain arrives.
The first swallow of the year, appearing as though it has never been away.
A robin that somehow seems to know exactly when you've picked up a fork and started turning the soil.
Logic tells us there are perfectly sensible explanations for all these things.
That doesn't stop them from feeling magical.
I sometimes think children notice these moments far better than adults do.
Children crouch to watch a ladybird climb a blade of grass. They become fascinated by worms after rain and can happily spend half an hour looking beneath a log to see what's living underneath.
Somewhere along the way, many of us stop looking.
Perhaps gardening gives us permission to start noticing again.
After all these years, I still find myself smiling at the simplest things. A foxglove appearing where nobody planted it. The scent of freshly cut grass drifts across a quiet garden. Sunlight catches the fine threads of a spider's web early in the morning.
They're tiny moments.
Easy to overlook.
But together they remind me why I've never fallen out of love with this job.
Gardens never stop teaching us to pay attention.
Maybe that's why they never stop surprising us.
And I hope they always do.
Marcus
