Last week Jon and I watched them movie The Secret Garden. It made me think of when my sister Fran read the book to me at bedtime when we were kids. I think I only heard half of it, she would read long after I fell asleep. But even though I didn’t hear the whole story I was always enchanted by the secret walled-in garden. I still am. It’s something Fran and I share.
Jon and I sat on the couch, the ipad with the movie on it between us. And when Mary and Dickon first went into the garden I cried. I still get teary thinking about it. I’m not sure why. I think maybe because the garden, hidden behind that high wall, with years of overgrown ivy, was finally seen again by these two children who intuitively knew its potential.
Fran’s Mini Gardens evoke the same feeling in me. Held in a small clay pot instead of a high wall, they speak of nature, nurtured by humans. They aren’t wild places but a coming together of us and the wild. We humans are in the bird baths and flag stone paths. Nature shows herself in the plants cultivated in a mini nursery in Fran’s back yard and transplanted into her gardens.
Fran has been showing and selling her Mini Gardens in the Bedlam Farm Open House for three years. She comes with a van full and they’re all sold by the end of the weekend. She’ll be selling them again on June 25th and 26th. You’ll find Fran and her gardens just outside my studio under the giant maple tree.
In the video above Fran talks about her Mini Gardens and how she makes them. She also shows some gardens in different stages of progress. You can keep up to date with Fran’s Mini Gardens throughout the year on her facebook page Fran’s Mini Gardens. And to see the first Mini Garden that Fran made for the Open House click here.
