Many of us have green fingers and thumbs. Some of us believe in landscaped gardens with flower beds laid out according to colour and blossoming time so that there is year-round all-round perfection, while others find it impossible to confine their love of plants within orderly boundaries.

These ‘others’ cannot rein in their affection and go by what would look ‘good’ in a particular corner or against this backdrop or that wall. Instead, they give in to the exuberance of their feelings and thus there is happy profusion — and confusion — of green and russet and all the shades of the rainbow in their little Edens, making walking amid their plants an experience to remember.

When I first saw my mother-in-law’s garden, there were leaves and flowers and fruit and vegetables in every inch of space. I had to walk sideways and take a deep breath as well if I didn’t want to brush against anything delicate! There were plants from all corners of the country and the happy gardener had no problem identifying each of them and relating the story of how and where she had picked it up and what special qualities it had – almost as if she was talking about her own children.

I was meeting her for the first time, expecting to be ‘interviewed’ and looked over critically before I joined the family. To set me at ease or maybe to calm herself into acceptance of the newcomer, she took me for a round of her garden. She could have had me running scared since there wasn’t a green bone in my body but luckily for me, the home I came from had a gardener very like her.

Unbridled enthusiasm

I was accustomed to a Father who expended all his boundless energy on his plants, and by his unbridled enthusiasm, practically forced everything he touched to grow to twice its normal size. It was not unusual for him to proudly drag in a gourd that extended the length of the table. We knew we would have to eat that gourd in every known form possible: from curry to chutney to salad to dessert but he laughed off our groans of despair and, before we had digested the gourd completely, was back with tomatoes the size of melons or a cluster of bananas as tall as us!

So, as I followed my mother-in-law through her mini-forest, I felt at home immediately. Here was someone else whose life was etched into each leaf – and wasn’t afraid to let it show.

Over the years, there were changes in both those gardens and the gardeners. By choice, Father left his house and his garden and went to enjoy the lush greenery of his son’s farm. It hurt us when we saw what the new owners had done to the plants he had left behind. To our eyes, by shaping and paving and colour-coordinating, they had deprived that garden of its soul.

Fate intervened for my mother-in-law and she was snatched away to greener pastures. Suddenly her garden looked bare. There were still vegetables and fruits and flowers, but the spark seemed to have left them – as it had left our lives. The ‘neatening’ that happened, the little empty spaces that appeared where once there had been all manner of pots and urns and other unconventional containers overflowing with plants, made us aware of the empty space in our lives.

But we learnt to live with the changes. Because, somehow the magic goes on, and there are still some who believe in abundance over order, who prefer an extravagance of colour and variety rather than neat lines and everything in its ‘place’.

Isn’t that how nature meant it to be?

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.