The Garden Before Breakfast

There's a quiet hour in every summer's day that most people never see. I count myself lucky that I often do.

There are some mornings when I arrive at a garden before anyone else has ventured outside. The house is still asleep, the curtains remain drawn, and the only signs of life come from the birds that have already been awake for hours. It's one of the unexpected privileges of working as a gardener. Before the first lawnmower starts somewhere down the road and before the day's conversations begin, I have a few precious moments to enjoy a garden exactly as it is.

Those early hours have a character all of their own.

The grass is often still wet with dew, leaving dark footprints behind me as I walk towards the shed. Spider's webs, almost invisible the evening before, suddenly reveal themselves as tiny droplets of water catch the first rays of sunlight. Every hedge seems to have its own chorus of birdsong, and if the morning is still enough, you can hear blackbirds scratching through the borders long before you see them.

It's a side of the garden that disappears remarkably quickly.

Within an hour, doors begin to open, neighbours exchange greetings over the fence and the familiar sounds of the day gradually take over. None of that is unwelcome. It's simply a reminder that gardens, like people, have their own daily rhythm. The early morning belongs to the wildlife. Later in the day, we gently borrow it for ourselves.

One of the things I've come to appreciate most is how honest a garden feels before breakfast. Nothing has been tidied, watered or deadheaded. The roses carry yesterday's fallen petals, the borders look exactly as nature left them overnight, and the birds go about their business without paying much attention to the gardener quietly unloading his tools.

Those are often the moments when I notice things I'd otherwise miss.

A family of wrens disappearing into a hedge with food in their beaks. A dragonfly resting on a bamboo cane, waiting for the warmth of the sun before taking flight. A bumblebee, moving more slowly than it will later in the day, making its first journey across the garden. None of these moments lasts very long, but together they remind me that a garden is already busy long before we begin working in it.

Perhaps that's why I've never minded an early start.

Of course, there are mornings when the alarm feels rather less appealing than staying in bed for another half an hour. Every gardener has those days. Yet I rarely regret getting up once I find myself standing in a quiet garden with the sun just beginning to climb above the rooftops. There's a sense of calm that seems unique to that time of day, as though the garden hasn't yet remembered all the jobs waiting for it.

I sometimes wonder how many people would see their gardens differently if they wandered outside a little earlier every now and then. Not with a watering can or a pair of secateurs in hand, but simply with a mug of tea and a few spare minutes. The garden feels different before breakfast. It's softer, quieter and somehow more generous with the little details that are so easy to miss later in the day.

Those details are part of the reason I still enjoy this job as much as I ever have.

Every morning begins with the possibility of seeing something new.

And after more than twenty years, that still feels like a rather wonderful way to start the day.

Marcus

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Marcus Bergin

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