Sex in gardens

Saxifraga federici-augusti

The temperature isn’t the only thing rising in our garden. With spring comes the start of a steaming hot orgy that lasts for months. This morning, mist hangs in the mild air as greenfinch and goldfinch sing to their lovers. Bumblebees stock up on pollen to take back to their love dens. Sex is on all of our minds.

In May my partner Chris and I will have been together for twenty years. We first met in December 2005 at a friend’s house party on Abbeville Road in Clapham South, London. I remember his dark brown Italian eyes, smooth lips, muscular body and open friendliness - but mostly those eyes. In hindsight I suspect it was love at first sight, not just lust, though at the time I rejected that idea for fear of being hurt. We chatted but ultimately I headed off with a friend to see Girls Aloud at G-A-Y when it was in the legendary Astoria, since demolished. Part of me wanted to stay, drawn to him like a magnet, but back then I had priorities.

Months later, I kept thinking of him, and the same friend who hosted the house party set me and Chris up on a date. Our friend organised dinner at his but mysteriously wasn’t there, his housemate let me and Chris in. While we waited we watched Scully being abducted by aliens in the X-Files, dated special effects making us laugh, and talked in the living room until our mutual friend arrived. A few dates happened, Chris persevering with my frustrating shyness back then. He kissed me in Astoria on the central stage with flashing lights and the dancing throng around us. It was a moment in slow motion. Eventually, some weeks later, at the end of a night out in the Two Brewers in Clapham, we went home together and that was that. The next morning my housemates caught a glimpse of his muscular gym body in his boxers and when he left, we all stood open mouthed at my luck. One said “he is f**cking hot” and we all laughed as I said “I know” in disbelief.

Time flew on, as it does. We rented a flat, begged our landlady to let us have a cat, and then were lucky to buy the flat from them. It was our home, where we lived and loved each other - somehow feeling out of place as adults with these real adult things. It’s where my love of gardening returned, entwined with my life with Chris - or Topher as I always call him, unless I’m grumpy. The thing about Topher is, he’s supportive and encouraging in a way I’d only experienced before with my family. Others had laughed at or quashed my love of gardening and wildlife, whereas Chris came with me to the garden centres and helped carry the plants. He defended and was proud of what I did.

During the height of my obsession to learn to be a better gardener, revising night after night for exams, I saw Monty Don advertise a new series of his show Big Dreams, Small Spaces. I applied on behalf of both of us to have Monty mentor the revamp our garden. Part of me wanted Monty to love what we came up with, another part wanted to do my bit for the LGBTQ+ community as a gay couple to show our relationship. We both felt some kind of obligation to do our bit for future generations to say “yes, it’s OK to be in a relationship like ours” in the way braver generations before had done for us.

Due to the show’s ‘big garden reveal’ date landing at the start of September, from that moment the planting centred on Topher’s birthday. I’ve planned gardens around that date ever since. But our garden is filled with my love and desire for him beyond that. Although Topher leaves me to get on with the gardening as I want, I’ve always thought of the garden as jointly ours - back in London and here in Yorkshire. He is constantly in my mind, constantly present and constantly a part of it.

Pulmonaria ‘Shrimps on the Barbie’

I’ve never particularly thought of being gay or queer as part of my identity - although it obviously is - because I spend all of my time thinking about gardening, wildlife and art. Those are my identity and infinitely more interesting than who I have sex with. And yet, I am gay, I am queer I suppose, and all of those parts of me, including my sexuality, are infused with our garden. Gardens are gardens because we make them and like it or not, who we are - from who we live with to our politics, views and actions - are part of our gardens whether we like it or not. There’s no escaping it. Which is a sign of gardens being art as much as any other.

Being gay and growing up as part of the gay world - as we thought of it back in my youth - has shaped who I am and for the better. I am so thankful that I am gay and could grow up in that world. A world that encouraged and sought equality, acceptance of difference and a progressive mindset. “I am what I am, I am my own special creation. So come take a look, give me the hook, or the ovation” sung Gloria Gaynor. That was my interpretation of it, that’s what I took from it, standing up for what is right. Celebrating desire and love as much as creativity, equality and individuality.

Sexuality in gardens is a huge and fascinating topic and yet we shy away from it. Talking about sex is still considered crass by some and yet, as plants and wildlife remind us in summer, it is a beautiful part of who we are. Being naked with one another consensually is one of the more innocent and disarming moments in life. Most people enjoy sex or the feelings of love and being loved. Whether we are gay, straight or other, we will all have experienced feelings toward other people in gardens at some point. The evidence is everywhere in the arts.

I read The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng a long time ago, a sexually charged and complex love story centred around a masterpiece garden called Yugiri in the mountains. Its story has stayed with me for the aftermath and trauma of Japanese occupation of Malaya in WWII but primarily for its depiction of a lifelong and passionate love reflected in the slow, tender and emotive creation of a garden. It tapped into something deep within me as a human and as a gardener.

Film director Emerald Fennel is currently making headlines with her sexually charged take on Wuthering Heights. Coincidentally the original story is set across the moor from our garden, a love story as turbulent and unstoppable as the wilderness its set in. Not a garden but to me it taps into the same emotive link we have with love and outside spaces. Fennel’s previous film, Saltburn, is full of lustful scenes of sun soaked naked flesh in the garden of the manor in which its set.

Artist David Hockney’s famous early work celebrates lovers naked in gardens. Gardens remain a subject of his work today, and though they lack the explicit sexuality of before, they are still charged with excitement. There are countless other examples of our fascination and exploration of the human body and sex in all forms of art, and you’ll notice the more you look, this is often linked to the garden setting. Gardens and sex are part of individual stories.

Our garden is more than the sum of its plants, it is passion and time

Twenty years since we first met and I love Chris more than ever and still feel my heart beat faster when I think of his eyes and body. Our garden represents so many things, especially my lifelong mission for equality and nature. It also represents years of daily thoughts about Chris and discussion with him. Of the inspiration he gives me to keep going. It is a physical and living representation of our relationship and lives together.