Garden sings for musicians as well as gardeners

For many of us, the garden is a place of inspiration. That inspiration can be reflected in many ways. Often people will say their garden is a refuge from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Some say gardening relaxes them; others go so far as to say that gardening is the only thing that keeps them sane.

Still others find artistic inspiration in the garden that results in incredible artwork. Fresh, dried or pressed flower arrangements begin in the garden. But paintings and songs find their origins in the garden, too. This week a snippet of a taped interview with George Harrison, the former Beatle who recently passed away, played on National Public Radio.

Harrison revealed that he wrote the words and the music to “Here Comes the Sun” in Eric Clapton’s garden. This got me wondering about how many songs have taken root in the garden.

One song that comes immediately to mind is “Gardening at Night” by R.E.M. The song is found on their album “Eponymous.”

“Gardening at night is never well” and “Times are a changin’ everywhere,” the lyrics say.

According to the jacket cover, the song was “written on a mattress in the front yard.” A cheerless two-word sentence reveals that the yard has been replaced with condominiums, a sad statement that the yard or garden that produced such artistic inspiration now is paved over.

The point, “gardening at night is never well,” is on one which I must disagree with R.E.M. As I write, the nearly full moon is hanging just outside my window in the western sky, reminding me that gardening at night is sometimes very well. The beauty of the full moon can bring out a luster in the garden that can’t be seen at the height of the day.

All right, all right. So maybe I’m taking their lyrics literally. Maybe they mean to say that trying to do something productive in the dark never is a good idea. Since most of the words in the version of the song on my album largely are undecipherable, I may never know what they were meant to convey, but I like it anyway. Although the words are somewhat jumbled, I like the music and I like the thought that some man was lounging around in his yard on a mattress when he found inspiration to pen the words and strum the notes. As a person who finds little time to lounge around, I find this highly amusing and faintly – strangely – inspirational.

An interesting and excellent song by Irish singer-songwriter Loreena McKennitt is “The Mummers’ Dance.” The song is about ancient ties to trees and the land. McKennitt explains on the inside jacket to her “The Book of Secrets” album that the dance of the mummer has its beginnings in the tree worshipping of people who lived in the once heavily forested parts of Europe.

“Mumming usually involves a group of performers dressing up in masks and clothes bedecked with ribbons or rags, and setting out on a procession to neighbouring homes singing songs and carrying branches of greenery,” McKennitt writes.

McKennitt’s lyrics explain the ritualistic dance of the mummer, then utter, “The songs of birds seem to fill the wood/That when the fiddler plays/All their voices can be heard/long past their woodland days.” These lyrics are aligned with the sentiment of most gardeners, that the life we cultivate, nurture and observe in the garden lives on after the seasons change, after lives come and go. In some ways we are the perennial fiddler who plays the song of the garden, through our planting, primping and reaping.

There must be hundreds of other songs that have their foundations grounded in the garden. Another album worthy of mention is “Mystical Garden” by Omar Faruk Tekbilek. It is saturated in the pleasure of the garden. The first track begins with the singing and chirping of birds and the woody and wholesome sound of the clarinet. It builds to a crescendo with the accompaniment of many other instruments and vocals.

The entire album, like so many other works inspired in the garden, captures the clear richness of the private spaces we hold dear. It describes through music the life we enjoy, and ultimately, the life which we must let go.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, RR1, Box 2120, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@ctel.net. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.