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Make mine a moon garden or, I (quite literally) dreamed of this garden
Make Mine a Moon Garden
Sometimes garden inspo strikes in the middle of the night, as one new parent discovers
By: Nandi Rose
Enveloped in the warm dark of the nursery, I am rocking the baby to sleep again. Thick gray curtains cover the window and keep the room in an unnatural midnight. He sprawls across my lap — a happy tuber in a sleep sack — as I shield his face from the glow of the phone screen.
I often look at my phone in the dark these days. I click around on the apps, feel the heavy press of world news, the brief power-surge of new notifications, and then the strange emptiness of time wasted in the artificial sun of the screen. Time sieves through me, and summer swells behind the curtains, and I wilt.
Outside, the light is at its full length, like the sinuous stretch of a house cat. But I’m inside, passing many hours in this small dim room: nursing, shushing, singing, swaying. Hunched one-handed over the rectangular light of my screen like Narcissus gazing into a reflecting pool, incapable of looking away.
I should be outside with my hands in the dirt, under a canopy of birdsong. I want to smell the tomato plants on my fingertips. Instead, I am trapped like a maiden in a tower, far away from the foxgloves that I know are glowing gold in the meadow at this very moment. I feel the energy leach from me as I scroll in my chair.
The garden (literally) of my dreams
One night, I have a dream of night-blooming flowers. There are hundreds of them in an open field, throats bared to the moon, lobes etched in silver. I run through the field to touch them, and the moon streams off the blossoms like water.
When the baby cries at 4 a.m. and I stumble into the nursery, the dream follows me. I settle into the rocking chair and unlock my phone as he latches, but instead of scrolling my newsfeed, I type night-blooming flowers into the search bar. The screen fills with creamy moonflowers and evening primrose. Pale white lilies and frosted gardenias. A spectacular flowering cactus called Queen of the Night. The images are so rich, I can almost smell their fragrance.
Perhaps this, I think, is a way to trick the algorithm, to be more mindful in my digital consumption. The more I search for night phlox and four o’clocks, the more I see. Timelapses of tiger moths in the mouth of a tuberose: this is the kind of visual I want to be fed in the dark.
Discovering plants that love the dark
I discover moon gardens, as they’re called, which come alive at midnight. They are built to tantalize the senses, to heighten awareness in the absence of light. Flowers flutter their ethereal petals, glowing bright as starlight. The silvery foliage of lamb’s ear and artemisia shines. These gardens are a celebration of what grows where the sun cannot reach — a testament to the idea that there is life and beauty in the dark.
The first documented moon garden was the Mehtab Bagh (“moonlight garden”) in India, land of my ancestors, built in 1533 and later integrated into the grounds of the Taj Mahal. These gardens were not accidental or stumbled upon; they were intentional, desired, planned. Someone said, what if the dark was not an absence of light but a reprieve, a gift? What if we could make something of it?
If I must be on my phone so much right now, let me use it this way. Not succumbing to the accidental suck of doomscrolling but practicing a kind of moon gardening: intentionally planting ideas and dreams that come to life in the dark. Filling my mind — and my newsfeed — with night-blooming flowers, silver-bright and sweet. Let me design my time so that my senses are fed, so that I am no longer starved.
And when the baby grows and the curtains open and these days are a distant blue memory, I’ll find my way back to the garden. I’ll emerge with fresh inspiration and the knowledge of how to cultivate the moon garden of my dreams.
For now, I place the baby back in his crib. It is still light in the sky as I leave the nursery, the last purple tug of the sun setting over the meadow. But I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. I’ve been in the dark, blooming.
About the writer
Nandi Rose is a singer, songwriter, and essayist interested in the intersection of art and nature. Under the name Half Waif, she has released six full-length albums and numerous EPs, appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk series, and toured internationally. Rose's essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Esquire, and Talkhouse.