Between the summer and fall garden seasons, I sometimes take a little time off. This year, I went to the Gaspé region of Québec.
There are some striking differences between Gaspésie and the Niagara region. The rock formations are completely different. The region is part of the Appalachians, and it is cooler than Niagara. But one of the differences I noticed most was time.
Québec has one time zone, so Gaspé shares the same clock time as Niagara, even though it is much farther east. New Brunswick, which is actually west of the easternmost parts of Gaspésie, is already an hour ahead.
So in Gaspé, the sun rises and sets earlier than I expect it to.
It is a little strange. The clock says the same thing it would at home, but the perceived time is different. When the sun is setting, I keep thinking it is later than it actually is.
Gardens, of course, work on sun time. They don’t work on clock time.
The sun will rise and set whether we have decided it is 5:50 or 6:50. Clock time makes a difference to the human experience because we are conditioned to it. The plants don’t particularly care.
Percé Rock
As you approach the town of Percé, you begin to see Percé Rock.
At first, from the highway, it can be a tiny rock formation on the horizon. Then you see it again from another angle. As you move through town, it appears from different places. You can see it from the water. And at low tide, you can walk along the exposed sea floor and see the rock up close.
It is the same rock every time.
But it doesn’t really look the same.
The scale changes. Its profile changes. The light changes. The tide changes. Where you are standing changes.
Percé itself seems to have organized around this pre-existing visual spot. The town is named after the rock. You encounter its shape over and over again. On a giant scale, the rock acts almost like a focal point in a garden.
This is interesting to me because the focal point wasn’t put there.
It was already there.
The town accumulated around it.
Gardens can work this way too. Sometimes the thing that gives a garden its direction isn’t something we need to add. It might be an old tree, a view, a slope, a rock, or something else that is already happening on the land. The work is partly recognizing it.
A steady presence
Percé Rock has a kind of steady presence.
You can move around it and see it from different places. It can look different at different times of day. The tide comes in and goes out. The seasons change.
And on a short enough time scale, the rock seems not to change at all.
But it is changing.
The hole that makes Percé Rock so recognizable was made by erosion. The rock once had another arch, which collapsed in 1845. Rain, wind and the sea continue to work on it.
So there are two different kinds of change happening at once.
There is the short-term change in the appearance of the thing, and then there is the long-term incremental change of the thing itself.
Gardens have this too.
A tree can be a recognizable element of a garden for decades. It changes appearance through the day as the light moves. It changes through the seasons. It flowers, leafs out, changes colour and becomes bare.
And meanwhile, very slowly, it is also getting bigger.
Its shape is changing.
The thing that remains recognizable is not actually remaining the same.
Different kinds of time
The tides add another kind of time.
At low tide, the sea floor beside Percé Rock becomes accessible. Later, the water comes back. The tides are also part of the process slowly eroding the rock, and coastal life organizes itself around them.
So there are several kinds of time happening in the same place.
There is clock time.
There is sun time.
There is tidal time.
There is seasonal time.
And then there is geological time.
Percé Rock itself is Devonian limestone, roughly 375 million years old. Nearby, including on Bonaventure Island, there are conglomerate formations that look almost like aggregate or concrete: stones and fragments cemented together into rock. The geology here belongs to the much larger Appalachian story.
I would like to come back to this another time.
Rocks are part of gardens too.
Bonaventure Island
Next to Percé Rock is Bonaventure Island, which you can reach by boat.
The rock formations are inhabited.
There are seals in the water. I saw a golden eagle and a bald eagle. And there are thousands and thousands of northern gannets nesting on the island. From a distance they look a little like seagulls, but up close they have a very distinct eye, almost like eyeliner around it.
Bonaventure Island is an important nesting site for northern gannets and other seabirds.
In true garden fashion, I also had a look at the plants.
Asters and goldenrod were in bloom. There were ferns, lichens and Cornus canadensis growing as ground cover. Then there were different shrubs, and above those, trees.
There was a layering of plant material that created an ecosystem: ground covers, shrubs, trees.
Different scales again.
You can look across the water and see an island.
You can walk through the forest and see its layers.
You can look down and find a little Cornus canadensis growing on the ground.
And then you can look back across the water and find Percé Rock again.
Leaving
On the last boat leaving Bonaventure Island, there were short grasses growing along the coast.
The wind was blowing through them.
As it moved through the grasses, it made little ripples, almost as if the grass was an extension of the ocean.
Behind all of this is the rock.
It is useful sometimes for a garden to have something recognizable to return to. A tree. A path. A view. A rock. Something that remains sufficiently steady that other things can change around it.
But sufficiently steady is not the same as still.
The light changes it. The seasons change it. Where you stand changes it.
And given enough time, the thing itself changes too.