Into a Little Chaos

by Civil Winters

INTO A LITTLE CHAOS

“I like to build little altars wherever I go—altars to the joy of chaos.”
Spring Rain, Mark Hamer

“The palace of Versailles shall be the heart of our kingdom, the gardens of exquisite and matchless beauty. Heaven shall be here.”

It is 1661, and the Sun King has delivered his edict. He will transform Versailles. No longer will it serve as a humble chateau upon the marshlands. Its origin, a hunting lodge laid in stone, shall be forgotten. Now and forevermore, it will be a masterpiece, one that will shine indefinitely in the face of the world. With his love of the outdoors and appreciation of place, the King commissions the greatest landscape architect he knows. Soon, André Le Nôtre will commence construction, revitalizing the grandest of gardens. He will need to hire another landscaper he can delegate to, someone who will respect the principle of his designs. Her name is Madame Sabine de Barra. Of her, he must ask one vital question:

“Are you a believer in order?”

The mid-July day should be winding down, but my responsibilities on the acreage have kept me from turning in. I surrendered to the clay hours ago, straying into the night, stained by the rich and heavy gumbo of its profile. Shovel-side protesting, I adjust a hot water bottle against my tender right hip and resume watching A Little Chaos. This scene is the meeting point. It is the first count in the Ballet de la Nuit between two gardeners and the ground they have chosen to tend.

“Do you believe in order of the landscape?” 

I know Le Nôtre’s challenge well, as I have endured it. Defiant eyes have held my gaze across a table, confronting the plan. With a focus on regenerative agriculture, my proposals are quite different than that of Versailles. Without fail, the mention of sustainability garners a look. There is often worry that aesthetics will be traded for utility. At every arch of an eyebrow, I have learned to breathe in before slowly exhaling my why. A garden has room to both showcase its loveliness and fulfill the needs of its caretaker.  

We each have an innate longing, one that gifts a desire to build a space that is worthy of us. Wherever or however you look at a garden, it will share what its creator is devoted to. It will declare before the heavens its own why for being. Because of this, the how of its making deserves careful attention. 

Every garden is individual. It cannot be stamped by a particular style. It must be listened to and observed, enjoyed as a mystery that unfolds across days, months and years. Madame de Barra understands this, despite Le Nôtre’s tendency to tame the landscape. Although her position is fictional, her spirit is kindred. She has also lived a story about searching for order and found it wanting. As a fellow designer, I recognize what it means to bear witness to the seasons and to give way to the ever-evolving current of their symphony.

“My father taught me gardening. He encouraged me to see beauty and be creative not as an exercise, but as an act of faith.”

Gardening spilled into my life the way the Eastern cottonwood sheds its pearly coat. It occupied every direction, serendipitous and unpredictable. Similar to Le Nôtre, an affection for the land is part of my inheritance. My parents encouraged me to dabble on a parcel of their property, using seeds, sprouts, and saplings in equal measure. In habitat gardening, spaces thrive when the design works in harmony with them and not against them. This has trained my eyes to squint and envision the garden growing into its own. It is an emergence in five, ten, twenty, and even one hundred cycles yet to pass.

In a way, time began for me here, kneeling in grass and tilth and regolith. It was a courtship established with respect and admiration. I promised the land my fidelity. In return, it vowed the beauty of its bloom, the yield of its harvest and the return of species stored throughout its slumber. There was a tethering, too, one beyond words. The ground marked me with every rivulet and stone, root ball and water sprout, antennae and tarsal segment. All that lived and died, both of its own accord and that which was personally sown, was noted by the care of my own two hands. Here, in the lacustrine rich earth, I was and always would be known. 

“Monsieur Le Nôtre, will it mend?”

Settling once more in 1661, my heart heavies in understanding. Madame de Barra sits amongst the shambles of her offering. Water bursts through tampered sluice gates, unleashing its full and reckless force. Yesterday, an outdoor ballroom had structure. Conch shells were arranged along a trickling water wall in homage of Apollo’s dusk descent into the sea. Now, all has been reduced to mud.

A gardener knows little of faithlessness. Change and circumstance are given. Disaster can breeze in and produce sudden alterations. The grower observes these elements, noting they may treat the garden cruelly. Within is an unfolding of flourish, fortitude, and fade. Ruination, brought into the garden by another, leaves nothing in its wake but an unanswerable demand: “Why me?”

When betrayal stomped across the edges of my landscape, it marred all that I had sown. The order of my seasons, once familiar in their patterns, were now in disarray. Grief wept like the cambium of a damaged tree, pleading the light and air for callus. No signs of life remained, neither budding metaphors nor evidence of greening. In an instant, the garden entwined with my sense of self was lost. 

For two years, there was only desolation. Ragweed and thistle grew uncontrolled, satisfying their seed banks. The sweet clover choked the cultivars of the roses. Treelines were tangled in creeping bellflower, rendering it impossible to plant. Garden boxes lay devastated, and a thunderstorm crumpled the shed to pieces. While spruce and cedar screamed for water in the scorch of the rising heat, they were left to desiccate in forgetfulness. I dug my heels down in resistance, attempting to reorder the consequences. It ended mercilessly, leaving me with the belief that my identity was to blame. I had failed as a gardener—and as a human being.

“Monsieur Le Notre, what should I do?”

 “Adapt, like a well-trained plant.” 

King Louis XIV was no landscaper, but he valued the concept of time. Returning to the garden, Sabine swaps stories with His Majesty.  “The time has come, madame, to face down our pasts, and live in the present.” The pulse that guides her rising, Sabine chooses to return. She trades her original concept for a warmer one. The window to perfection is now paradise renewed. 

This past summer and autumn, I stood at the entrance of my garden and let courage take hold. There was brokenness to tidy, but with care, it unfurled with joie de vivre. My side of the acreage was uprooted with new vision and flow, every ninebark, spirea, and potentilla transplanted to kinder positions. Thaw will tell the continuing narrative. My planting instincts have returned, and I trust them to guide me regardless of the weather. When spring arrives, I will work the soil’s rich and steady horizons—and be known once more.

Ken Druse wrote that there is widespread disagreement on how to manage and restore land. Still, he believes that the hand that caused hurt can also help the land heal. While I wished to rewrite my story, the garden remembers. It tells the full and miraculous arc of then, now, and when. The garden is a living organism, formed in the connection between landscape and gardener. They shape one another, making all the chapters of becoming worthwhile. 

Gardens are not about order. For both Madame de Barra and I, order “looks backwards into the Renaissance.” It paints an illusion that we can exert our will over nature. Neither we nor our control will endure. Gardens are not still life. They are dynamic and in motion, a continuing conversation that sings its own and infinite song. 

We yearn to belong where we are deserved. Should we also ache to be worthy of the landscape? In the birth and billowing, the fallow and senescence, the surge of color and succession, of the layers beneath canopied lindens and before understory mosses: yes.

Time began in a garden. It will begin again. The garden is an invitation into fullness, a welcoming of place. It is deep and wide enough to encompass voices other than our own. There, the spade is waiting. Our best hope, Madame de Barra reminds us, is to root ourselves in reciprocity, extending “patience, care and a little warmth from the sun.”

“This abundance of chaos? This is your Eden?”

Yes, Monsieur Le Nôtre. This is, indeed, my search for it.

CIVIL WINTERS

Civil Winters lives in the heart of the Canadian prairies where she designs regenerative landscapes. When her hands aren't full of earth or Earl Grey tea, she runs, writes, paints, chases her niece, and entertains an ark-load of critters.