A Garden Built From Words, Not Pictures.

“Nestled at the mid-point of the path, and accessed from the kitchen and living room, is a circular gravel courtyard allowing direct connection between the indoor and outdoor spaces. At the rear of the garden, there’s a timber screen concealing compost bays, with two raised vegetable beds adjacent. The gravel path passes through the veggies ….”

What happens when you read this? Do you get a vivid picture of the garden described or do you just tune out?

I never expected to discover something entirely new about myself at my age, but I did, last week. As a tuner outer I’m an aphantasic.

Forgive the AI but it helps here:

“An aphantasic (or aphant for short) is someone who has aphantasia — a condition where a person cannot voluntarily form mental images. Here’s lots more detail about it.

In simple terms:

• If you ask most people to picture a red apple, they can “see” it in their mind.

• An aphantasic doesn’t see an image at all — just darkness or nothing visual.”

That’s me – I’m not down to total darkness. I’ve struggled since learning about this to discover just what I do actually ‘see’ in my mind. It’s like fishing amongst ghosts. Glimpses, vague and fleeting.

I suddenly understand lots of things. I understand why when people describe something as ‘beautiful writing’ it’s a cue for me to skip that text. It’s no good going on and on in absorbing detail about a garden or a landscape for someone who can’t picture it. About 90% of most articles about gardens are wasted on me, because I have no idea really what is being described. So, often, like a preliterate child, I just look at the pictures. I used to ask people if they really liked reading garden descriptions and truly, I didn’t really believe them when they said they did. It was bewildering.

I think I’ve always known that if you asked me to describe the pictures on the wall of my bedroom, which I look at quite often, I’d be in difficulty. Just felt as if I was lazy, somehow, or not paying attention. (That sounds daft, now I’ve said it)

And now I wonder how on earth I managed to design and create the garden at Veddw without being able to picture anything I was intending to create. Especially in the days before photographs were easy and quick to take and look at.

I think I have some sense of form or space in my head. Somehow I was spot on, I believe, with scale and relationships between things. But I would often ‘imagine’ some part of the garden, then go out and look at it and find it wasn’t at all as I thought. It must have helped that I live in the garden I’m creating. I can repeatedly go and look. And these days I can take thousands of photographs to tell me what it looks like. I also depend on information. I look at a part of the garden, seeing what it lacks or needs, then research that plant or structure or whatever it may be.

I couldn’t design someone else’s garden very well, could I? What do you think? It must be why I struggle with cognitive shuffling as a way to get to sleep, because I think it helps with that if you can imagine the things you’re naming to yourself.

I’m still stuck trying to work out the implications of all this. Other people see pictures in their heads? Worse - some people are plagued by seeing images in their heads. It’s called hyperphantasia. Someone on Substack told me about that and said: “It's basically like watching a TV, but whatever you want to see is shown…” He describes it as endlessly distracting and that I am the one who is best off in this. Who knew????

You may be amused to know that I couldn’t think of a way to illustrate this post.