The Pleasures of Gardening... And Rosé
I can’t remember exactly when I stopped getting home at dawn from a night out on the town and started getting up just around then to get knee-deep in soil in my rooftop garden. But the truth is I’ve always liked getting down and dirty—as a way to come clean. Gardening, for me, is a respite from the distractions that hijack my peace of mind and pollute my imagination. As I seed, weed, and water on repeat, I’m like a yogi about to attain Nirvana; my mind is not exactly still, but it is pricelessly balanced, as if in harmony with the environment.
This past year my plants kept me company when others couldn’t. I marveled at how microgreens of every flavor and color reached maturity in less than a week. I savored the momotaro tomatoes that ripened overnight, as if just for me! The bulbs I planted in the spring blossomed with delightful salmon-hued ranunculus and rose-tinted dahlias that looked ripped from the Renaissance canvases of Arcimboldo. Because they were too beautiful for my eyes alone, I started leaving bud vases filled to the brim in the elevator for my neighbors.
That’s one of the secrets about an abundant garden: It’s meant to be relished in communion with others. It’s why I’m exalting the medicinal benefits of traditional Chinese herbs through the Hao Life—my new company launching this month with T&C contributor William Li.
And it’s why Richard Christiansen, the brilliant polymath aesthete behind the agency Chandelier Creative, transmuted his Flamingo Estate, a former Xanadu of iniquity in the hills of Los Angeles, into a botanical playground, one that bears produce as gorgeous as the bounty on this page and that has inspired a whole range of natural goods, from olive oil and honey to, as of April, a Pink Moon rosé harvested in California’s Central Coast. Beauty, we know, ought to be shared. After all, the more you sow, the more you reap. The pleasure that comes from the act of cultivation, however, is all yours.
This story appears in the May 2021 issue of Town & Country.
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