Enthusiasts are interested enough and thinking about it enough to plant ephemeral flowers etc. - and would become bored by static arrangements. For the casually interested, non-stop color clots and rock-like shrubs are fine. They haven't thought about plants and planting enough to become bored by these. And would be annoyed if they checked on them later and they were much different. The arborvitaes and impatiens are outdoor furnishings, analogous to household furniture. Catalogs are full of adjectives like "uniform", "consistent" and "predictable".

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. (Keats)

Maybe, like Keats, the true gardener accepts both the agony and the ecstacy. The moon is out tonight, and in double digits below freezing so the stars are showing blue. The gardens are a sea of white punctuated by conifers and the tips of shrubs. It's still a garden, just a different one now - and it doesn't suffer any for my lack of interaction, beyond observation, with it. And neither do I. Melancholy? More a time for other pursuits put aside between April and November. Or a time to peruse the catalogs and ponder the possibility of trying something besides the ever reliable impatiens and cedars. Or to discover that predictability and consistency fits into the plan of never being disappointed.

It is a diverse community.

Well, we spend so much time alone with our thoughts.
An hour turns into a day before we know it.
We dig, we dig, we dig ...
And i think that's not just a mechanical process.
All that solitary digging, combined with the ever-awareness of the cyclic nature of things, is bound to unearth a little melancholia from time to time.
But all in all, i think gardening is such a hopeful pursuit, such a joyful preoccupation. I don't really think we can be defined by our moments of sad reflection ...

>All that solitary digging, combined with the ever-awareness of the cyclic nature of things, is bound to unearth a little melancholia from time to timeLittle melancholias can be controlled with well-timed applications of beneficial nematodes. Big melancholias require more serious intervention.

Suggestion...one can reduce winter melancholy by reading through some of the hundreds of on-line gardening blogs. Ink, I trust you are cheering Mitch on as she details her step by step efforts to construct a meditation garden for the San Francisco spring garden show. Her blog can be found on the Garden Rant site and typical Mitch, she titles her blog 'Garden Porn'. The glass garden wall she is building illustrates her great talent. Check it out!

Great analogy, Ink.
YouÂve alluded to the emotional aspects of garden design before, and I agree that it applies to all forms of artistic endeavor. If it moves us emotionally it has more power and impact.
As I read your post I couldnÂt help hearing a Billie Holiday refrain:

"BlowÂ.Ill wind, blow away. Let me rest today.
YouÂre blowin me no good."

As you say gweirdo. You see I wasn't talking about reducing or controlling melancholy, in fact, I may even consider encouraging it. "If it moves us emotionally it has more power and impact." Well said.

It is very hard for me to consider gardening a melancholy activity, even in a seasonal slump. It is an exercise filled with such anticipation, faith and promise of renewal. Planting, nurturing and tending are all very positive processes and forward looking and even the more technical design aspects offer creativity and a chance to recreate or renew.

At the worst, I consider winter a time to reflect and plan for the coming season and anticipate how much some plants will develop more and add greater impact. But then I am not engulfed in a snowy and frozen winter environment :-) But even in the gloom of a gray, wet and cold PNW winter, there is light at the end of the tunnel - the witch hazels are coming into color and hellebores setting buds and spring bulbs poking up noses and you just know spring is around the corner. How can that be melancholy?

On a broader note, if gardening and gardens are considered healing and therapeutic, and most do acknowledge that they indeed do offer this attribute, even rather base plantings of rows of pink impatiens against a backdrop of ordinary cedars produces some sort of pleasant emotional stimulation compared to an alternative of bare ground or concrete.

Even engulfed in a frozen winter environment gardengal, winter in the garden is, as you say, 'filled with such anticipation, faith and promise of renewal' and not melancholy. And gardens are definitely therapeutic - 10 years ago, after a major medical crisis, I could not even turn over in bed without help. Creating this garden provided/provides invaluable physical, intellectual/creative psychological and emotional stimulation. Never underestimate the healing power of working in a garden! (But impatiens against cedars just doesn't 'cut it' for me...:-)

This is becoming more like a chat type of thread, I like the input as it gives me an opportunity to expand my view, not in an attempt to persuade anyone or be persuaded by them but by seeing and considering others take we all win. The 'impatiens against cedars' phenomenon is a bit like cosmetic plastic surgery isn't it? I agree that this is marginally better than concrete (the impatiens that is) but "anticipation, faith and promise of renewal" with the emphasis on faith is a similar feeling to what I am calling melancholy, whereas a static arrangement in the garden and attempting to beat aging is a denial of a process. I agree totally with woodyoak and notice that she says "working in a garden" and not "the garden". I find this an important distinction.

So often, Ink weaves a cloth so fine that I fail to discern the pattern. But this once, well maybe I do see something.

Many years ago I found myself referring to my seedlings as my babies. Which makes the garden what? ... my mistress? It would not do for me to live in the land of Ink, separated from my lover by icy snowbanks for months on end.

So now I have stuck in my mind, a visual image of Ink at his window and the words of the song Meditation come to mind ...

In my loneliness
When you're gone and I'm all by myself and I need your caress
I just think of you
And the thought of you holding me near
Makes my loneliness soon disappear

Though you're far away
I have only to close my eyes and you are back to stay
I just close my eyes
And the sadness that missing you brings
Soon is gone and this heart of mine sings

Yes I love you so
And that for me is all I need to know

I will wait for you
Till the sun falls from out of the sky
for what else can I do
I will wait for you
Meditating how sweet life will be when you come back to me

"Suffering the gloom, inevitable as breath, we must further accept this fact that the world hates: We are forever incomplete, fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures  we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials  make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be only a fragment is always to strive for something beyond ourselves, something transcendent. That striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous  it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors  it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being.

To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight."

In Praise of Melancholy

Eric G. Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University.

Oh hell. I wish every month could be June. Lacking memory of great poems by Keats and Dickenson I only know that I hate winter. Winter is a liar, i'ts sun is deceitful, shining through winter windows and tempting us to go and explore the outdoors. It is very cold tonight and a full moon to boot. Maybe those Texas UFO's will be flying around here tonite. Seriously I lament for June.

I'm with you muddydogs. I like to play in the sunshine. Steve in Baltimore County.

I'll guess that there are no more melancholiacs in the garden than elsewhere. But the most melancholy song by Billie Holiday, or anywhere, must be "Strange Fruit." It does feature a tree, which ties it to the garden (of despair). I hope this link works -

Here is a link that might be useful: Very early Billie Holiday,

Melancholia is an upside down thing. It is inverse. It puts our feelings--the shadows and the holy terrors--outside in the sunlight for a time. These little monsters come out into the open, and it's not surprising really that they choose the cold frozen seasons, the dark side of the year, to press forward into our awareness. The sun would, does, dispel them like mist. Only it's not really a "them" that shows up when we reverse the surface parts of ourselves and let the deepest parts come out. Some of us find out that the monsters within are "us". There's the little monster child called death. We'd disown him if we could. And there's the sad child of our lost potential. And there are other waifs and orphansÂaging, decreased healthÂthese are our own fears, but they are as much a part of who we are and what our future holds as any son or daughter born of our biology.

But then melancholia is also concave. It shelters. In its curves and hollows it holds the fragile tender persons we are. We learn to treasure the mortal. In doing so we treasure life in a way that can become much greater than ourselves. I suppose I am saying that this self-acceptance--this sheltering of the holy terrors and monster children of our own souls--moves us to greater acceptance of others and, for that matter, of life itself.

I do not know whether any of you have any idea what I'm talking aboutÂAll I know is that when I walked out into the frozen kiss of winter this morning, I wondered how many more winters and springs I will be given. In one and the same moment I felt the deepest sadness imaginable, and the greatest love, and the most overwhelming joy at the absolute gift of it all.

AndÂit was a pleasurable feeling. I suppose that's it's mystery. In the inverse concave shelter of our melancholy we whisper "Alleluia" and wait for spring.

Wellspring

Thank you, Wellspring, for your beautifully crafted contribution to this thread. Outstanding expression of thought! No one has mentioned that some of the world's great art, music and ideas have been created during periods of melancholy.

Wasn't that my point nandina?