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Celebrity Diggers - Olivia Harrison
One of Olivia Harrison's fondest memories of her husband, George, is of him standing in their 35-acre garden at night, looking out in wonderment into the darkness. "He loved the garden in the daytime, but at night he wouldn't notice all the imperfections, the things that needed to be done," the 58-year-old says, looking out into forests planted by the former Beatle. "He loved that. He'd look into the shadows and see something else - the darkness would free his imagination, his creativity. He also said nature was where he felt closest to God. Or as George Bernard Shaw said. "The best place to seek God is in the garden. You can dig for him there.' And I agree."
"Since her husband died in 2001, Harrison has found the Oxfordshire garden they created together over 30 years a place of inspiration and spirituality. Today, it's often in special garden spots that she meditates. Often when you meditate in the same spot, the vibrations feel right, so you tend to return to that place, she explains.
Whilst she has several full-time gardeners to keep the enormous grounds, with Alpine forests and caves, lakes, borders, greenhouses and rockeries, in shape, she still gardens most days. She also loves the soil, whether it's the clays of Surrey or the volcanic earth of Hawaii. The last few years, I haven't been as hands-on as when George was around, she admits. But then it was fun. We'd go to the garden centre and load the truck up with plants. And we'd always go to the big flower shows, where I'd have to write down everything he wanted. We'd sit with the bulb catalogues and order thousands of bulbs. Now it's more taking pine needles out of ponds and weeding.
While the pair often gardened together, each always had a seperate project: George a woodland, for instance, and she a potager, in which she still tries to grow several varieties of gourds, whose yellow, green and orange fruit spill down from four pergolas in autumn. They'd often start the day doing their own thing, then meet for tea and join forces, sometimes pinching each other's plants for their own projects. While the organic vegetable garden - which provided the mainly vegetarian family with enough produce for their own suppers - was Olivia's patch, the thousands of trees were George's responsibility: acers, birch, cedars, prunus.
He was a real tree man, which is why we don't have views to the Thames and longer, she says wryly. I think his love of gardening started when he'd go down the allotment with his farther. Before he died, it was where he found real peace.
Not that gardening brings only contentment, she admits. Nature provides constant tests of her patience. For the past few years, for instance, deer have been eating her precious red foxtail lillies and striped Versicolor roses. The hundreds of pale-pink poppies she planted a few years ago have turned salmon, then coral, then orange because of the alkaline soil. And her gourds always seem to wilt before they ripen, thanks to the overly cool autums. But then that's what gardening gives you: a humility. You can plant a seed, but then nature will take its course. You can't overule it.
Much of her recent joy, she says, has come from the realisation that gardening is about creating beauty for future generations - such as their son Dhani, just as the original owner of the property, Sir Frank Crisp, who started the garden in the 1880s, never got to see the full glory of the garden she and George worked so hard on. So while it's a selfish activity in some ways, it's also incredibly selfless. You give and you get. That's how nature works.
Article copied From The Times 20.5.06
The Gardeners Issue Magazine
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