
“I clearly remember the wood grains on the dresser in front of me when I got the phone call telling me I had bone cancer. When someone tells you something like this, it just doesn’t make any sense. It was shocking, and lots of thoughts went through my mind, even though it turned out it was a relatively simple surgery and I’m over it now. I love a lot of things – photography, music, gardening; but what I love even more is all the memories that these things bring back to me. And the interesting thing was that I stopped listening to my favourite songs when I got the news. I wanted to protect the memories that were carried with them. I didn’t want to imprint them with the fact I had cancer. Memories are precious things. So I wanted to create a garden that stands out and tells a story. You can always have a theme with a garden but it’s hard for it to tell a definitive storyline. I wanted something that is different and memorable. Memories are very special, but if you don’t have a strong feeling about something, or it doesn’t have a big impact on you, you soon forget about it. Well, I clearly remember the grains of that dresser.”
-Check out Matthew’s show garden at the Bloom Festival.- This story was highlighted by the Bloom Festival http://bloominthepark.com –