Page 17 - Brandon Sun - Your Home your Way (2019)

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2019 • YOUR HOME YOUR WAY • THE BRANDON SUN 17

» Continued from Page 16 the English herbaceous bor-
der, colour-co-ordinated, very
She left that behind 11 years photogenic and impossibly de-
ago, decamped full time to her manding.
garden and has developed “A Young, driven to perfection
Way to Garden” as a brand of and wanting to make a mark,
sorts, with a website, blog and you set yourself up for disap-
radio show. She has revamped pointment. We were too impa-
her book, and its reworking in- tient for effect, not sufficiently
evitably tracks the changes in comprehending of the purpose
her gardening outlook. of gardening, and inevitably
She painted herself -- too way too hard on ourselves when
modestly -- as a neophyte when things flopped.
the first edition came out, but “I would run up here from the
her examination of the temporal city at weekends,” she said. “I had
space between the old and new to do this, I had to do that and it
Roach illustrates that gardening was never good enough. I could
is a journey and not a destina- barely walk up the stairs after a
tion. It is something you do and day’s gardening. Nothing ever
something you live, not some- looked like the beautiful pictures Rena Nayar chucks a massive sunflower plant on a pile that she grew in the
thing you have. in the garden books of the day.” community gardens in the southwest corner of Brandon in 2017. (File)
This may seem obvious, but Now her expanse of lawn, at
when I asked her about her for- its edges, is allowed to revert to a know their biology. I like that made a conscious decision to
mative years, I could see a mir- meadow, and she finds delight in I would never (have) thought I walk away from a high-pressure
ror image of my own self in her simple chores and observations, would be a girl who loves know- career and reset everything,
pained experiences. in finding a caterpillar disguised ing her weeds by name, but I even if it was just in time for
The 1980s and 1990s were as a twig, and she loves to weed. do.” the Great Recession.
decades when books and “I have my best thoughts The other aspect of Roach’s
glossy magazines trumpeted weeding,” she told me, “and I gardening story is that she » The Washington Post