However warm and sunny it’s been on Galicia’s coasts since Easter, here in the mountainous interior it’s been one of the wettest and coldest Springs on record. In the Quiet Garden, high winds and three May frosts have left scorched leaves. Rereading the gardening journal I’ve kept since moving here, I note that everything is at least a month later than what I’d come to consider ‘usual’.
Only one feature of the garden actually thrives in such conditions, and that is the labyrinth. The tiny plants set out along the lines chalked on the ground eleven years ago now form a resplendant box hedge that grows most happily in winter. Since the box is a minature variety, it will never grow higher than knee-level. The exuberant little spikes it sends out need only light trimming with an electric saw once a year, mainly to keep the paths between the hedges wide enough to permit easy walking. Whatever the weather, the Chartres design, seen from afar or in the photos taken by drones, makes an immediate impact. The whole thing is now a solid fixture, dense and vibrantly green after so much rain: a gigantic outdoor sculpture with a calming presence all its own.
Having appeared on everything from the municipal calendar to TV documentaries, the labyrinth now receives a fair number of visitors. Labyrinths are intended to promote contemplation, so it’s natural that many of those who walk it do so slowly and purposefully. Others, however, appreciate the whimsy inherent in the twists and turns and backtracking. Some adults (usually couples) compete to see who can get to the centre and out again the fastest, while children often bring a subversive sense of fun to the exercise by jumping the hedges. I worry more about the dreaded box beetle or fungus hitching a ride on someone’s shoe than I do about hedge-jumping, but so far the labyrinth has been lucky, and I hope it always will be.
