The Stoic Gardener
The Stoic Gardener
How George Harrison Found Peace in the Garden
I recently had the absolute pleasure of meeting Dhani Harrison—son of Beatle George Harrison. During our chat he mentioned that his father was an avid gardener, which was complete news to me. It turns out that as Dhani grew up he didn’t know “Dad the musician”, it was always “Dad the gardener”.
One of his most famous gardening projects was the creation of a large, organic garden at his home, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, England. Following the Beatles’ break-up, George cleared away much of the weeds and overgrowth at Friar Park himself, restoring and improving it for many years. He incorporated many unusual and exotic plants into the garden, including a rare Japanese tree called a monkey puzzle.
On the topic of being a gardener, I love this quote from his autobiography I, Me, Mine:
I’m really quite simple. I don’t want to be in the business full time, because I’m a gardener. I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don’t go out to clubs. I don’t party. I stay at home and watch the river flow.
Fascinating for me though was his ability to incorporate stoic practice into his gardening. According to friend and fellow gardener Monty Don, Harrison adopted a Stoic approach to weeding. He accepted the need for hard work and saw the task as an opportunity for reflection and meditation. Don described Harrison as being "at one with the task, working steadily and purposefully, seemingly lost in thought."
This morning I joined a local volunteer gardening community here in London and spent a few hours weeding, digging, raking and snail flicking. The work was highly therapeutic and I resonate an awful lot with this idea of steady, purposeful gardening—not rushing for the sake of finishing quickly.
I am also reminded of the Saturday morning gardening at the Three Wheels Japanese temple in London that I do sometimes. Volunteers can come and clean the zen garden out the back of the temple. Typically this consists not of weeding or snail re-homing, but fishing fallen leaves and twigs from between the stones using tweezers so as not to disturb the beautifully raked stones. There are also the ‘gifts’ that the foxes leave from time to time.
That work is incredibly steady and purposeful. Not to be rushed.
To finish, here’s George on Good Morning America in 1981 talking about life after The Beatles. He briefly talks about how the early 70’s consisted pretty much only of him recording music and gardening. You can really sense his passion.