By Blake Davis

Buckfast Gardens: The Millennium Garden

Sitting in the cozy community room for monastic guests of Buckfast Abbey in Buckfastleigh, United Kingdom, surrounded by books on history, gardening and faith, my new friend and fellow monastic guest, Tom, asked, “Could you live like this? Does this life appeal to you?”

Having spent the week living among and participating in the routine of the Benedictine Monks. My immediate thought was that the life I observed as a passing guest, lived out over decades by the monks sounds -on the surface at least- wonderful, considering the current busyness of my overall life.

This is why for nearly 20 years, I have had on my bucket list the desire to stay in a monastery to experience this routine, quiet contemplation and prayer. And upon confirmation that I would be traveling in England for work, my wife suggested that in celebration of my 40th birthday I should extend my time in the UK to fulfill that bucket list item. With the research of options, she presented me, Buckfast Abbey, known for its gardens, was the obvious choice.

A Garden That Feels Like Home

Having grown up in a log house in the woods of middle Tennessee, wandering through forests filled with mountain laurel, Christmas ferns and frequent sightings of hummingbird moths, I have always felt most at home in naturally wild areas, instead of (though I appreciate) garden areas where human intervention was evident in the push against nature’s organic fullness.

Therefore, it is no surprise that of the four main gardens publicly accessible at Buckfast Abbey, the Millennium Garden drew me with its natural wood border fence and forest aesthetic. After all, what better influences how I cultivate my garden than the experiences that cultivated me?

The Millenium Garden

The first thing that stands out is how this young garden feels old. Tightly layered plantings create the feeling of a lush woodland as the white bark of silver birch trees rise above an understory of hostas, ferns, Brunnera and Pulmonaria surrounding a dimensional representation of the Buckfast logo: A deer drinking from a pool of water.

Inscribed around the pool is Psalm 42:1: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God."

A Garden a Thousand Years in the Making

Founded in 1018, the Abbey was dissolved in 1539 under King Henry VIII leading to much of the monastery falling into ruin. Until 1882 when a small community of French Benedictine monks returned to the site, and the original foundations of the medieval Abbey were discovered when a monk was digging vegetables.

In 1907 a group of mostly four monks envisioning what could be, started rebuilding the Abbey. They cut and dressed stones by hand as funds allowed. It took over 30 years.

In 2016, Buckfast Abbey gardener Maia Hall envisioned celebrating the history with the Millenium Garden, inspired by the Abbey’s emblem depicting a stag drinking at the water’s edge and using materials largely sourced from the Abbey grounds and surrounding countryside. While it didn’t take 30 years, it did win the Silver medal in the 2017 Royal Horticultural Society Malvern Spring Festival, as well as the People's Choice Awards.

The only public-facing garden at Buckfast not designed with crisp geometric patterns, the aggregate path follows much more organic and meandering curves with plantings tightly placed in like a lush forest.

After weeks of traveling in an English summer heatwave where buildings and trains do not typically have air conditioning, the shade and -somehow- breeze between the trees while walking the path felt like a gift.

The curve leads to a seat made of tree stumps on one side -where I spent much time sitting and thinking, journaling and feeling like I was being hugged by nature- and on the other a statue of the Virgin Mary.

With enough time visiting, sitting and observing, I realize what confuses me is this is a relatively very young garden, but it has been specifically designed in a way that makes it FEEL old and historic. The carefully planned colors and intentional curation as the white bark at the entrance is pulled together with white patterned Brunnera and Pulmonaria surrounded by patches of green ferns, and splashes of color as the blue hostas and their light purple blooms accent the feeling of a deep forest, even though right around the corner is an open field with full sun and a gorgeous tall abbey. These are all layered together to feel like time has filled out every space. But I remind myself this garden is less than 10 years old. Making me excited about the possibilities of what can be done in my yard to curate a feeling of age and growth even in a metropolitan area.

Though as I sat there longer and visited over a few days, something about HOW intentionally connected the colors were started to show the human influence on nature. This was the most quiet and still of all the gardens. And coming from my background, the tightly spaced underplantings giving a deep forest feeling when compared to all the other gardens at Buckfast where spacing is ample, helped me understand that my issue of continually planting too tightly in my garden must come from that innate desire to emulate the forests of my childhood, something the Millenium Garden captures well to make a small space feel like a deep, shaded forest.

What I take home are the realizations that muted forest colors like white bark can pop as much as a bright flower when accentuated by similar accents added as understory plants. That Hostas, Ferns, and Alchemilla can be planted in layers so densely that it forces the way you walk, and if combined with rounded paths, organic structures like seats and fences made of wood and still water feature, even a small garden space can make me feel like I’m standing in a deep forest.

Could You Live Like This?

So, my answer to the question Tom asked in the gathering room has continued to become clearer to me.

I think of the history of Buckfast that I learned about during my stay, and the routine days of firmly scheduled meals, calls to prayer, repeating pre-written worship and meditation are healing for my soul for a time, but like that initial small group of monks who dug up and rebuilt the abbey stone by stone, I, too, am a builder.

My garden, to me, is not so much a place I get to steward, as it is a place where I can live out the structure that I see in my head and build into my Pinterest boards. A space where --even if I don’t have the 300 acres that Buckfast has to work with-- just like the Abbey became for me a space for rejuvenation and sustenance and rest because a small group of monks carved and stacked stones. I can take my invasive ridden plot and, one foundational piece at a time– build a space for rejuvenation and sustenance for those species finding it ever more difficult with land clearings and new construction. My prayer and goal is to bring back hummingbird moths and emulate the feeling of a deep forest with whatever space is available, just like Maia Hall did with the Millenium Garden. And I see clearly now that when beauty looks effortless, it’s simply a sign of a foundation built on clear vision, deliberate planning, patience and years of stewardship.

We as Davidson County Master Gardeners, get the privilege (and struggle) of living in an urban setting where we get to build foundations for our native pilgrims to visit and find sustenance. We are blessed to have the knowledge and skill to be builders and stewards of the areas of our city we can influence. So that those who come after us, be they human or pollinator, can feed on the fruits of our foundations.