The gardener plants the shrub, but the plant finds the light and displays its blossoms according to its own rules. Well-balanced gardens have a quality of restfulness and exquisite perfection, with plants chosen and placed like words in a perfect poem. When all the plants are planted, and the gardener has retired, nature comes in and puts on the finishing touches. A cardinal flower may volunteer to mark a field of blue with an accent of crimson. Or a clump of spiky, upright grasses may arise, in seeming answer to the pendulous limbs of a weeping cherry.
Nature can change the mood of a garden completely in just minutes.
A sunny, cheery garden turns somber as gray clouds darken the sky. Tall junipers sweep back and forth in the wind and rain, scrubbing the sky clean. The cold of winter can bring on a deathlike state, plunging ice daggers into tender foliage and soft earth. All the busy green of summer vanishes like a dream. Life retracts into roots that become hidden and forgotten in the frozen soil.