This marsh marigold says something that gets close to how I feel about the garden. It is bright and sunny, quite joyful. It has been dormant under thick ice for part of the winter. It was a gift from a neighbour. It shines, calls out, makes me happy. Each day I look at it and more flowers are open.

It says much more that I cannot express. This garden is my final creation. A culmination of a lifetimes gardening in a muddled and confused way, making gardens for other people, occasionally making short lived gardens for myself. Learning and unlearning and learning again. That process continues, the learning and unlearning, but this is my last garden.

It means so much to me. To make a garden is the only activity that exists that can save the world. This is what we all must do or we will die out. An extreme statement, you can believe it or not believe it, I can do nothing about that. I will keep making my garden.

My garden? It’s not my garden, it is a garden. It is for us. We will inhabit it and it will feed us. It will feed us, body and soul. Louise has given me this land, lent it to me to plant, this 120 square meters. Thank you, in the way I thank the marsh marigold for flowering, thank you. This garden is my gift to you.

I am a passenger, a traveller along a gentle road sowing seeds as I go, pausing here and there to accompany the growing plants or harvest their bounty. To count the petals, to catch a fleeting scent and search out the flower that flings it into my path. To hear the birdsong and know it and not know, to understand it and not understand it.

The marsh marigold is simple and beautiful. It is not rare, and yet between me and it there is a love that is quite unfathomable. Also ordinary. That is the essence. Life, and love, are both unfathomable and ordinary. I am saying all this to you, Louise, also to everyone. Thank you.