Not all gardens are planted. Some are held in longing, shaped by memory and softened by the knowledge that they may never fully grow in our soil. This is one such garden.

Today’s musing has me in nostalgia for warmer climes: Some dreams you know, almost from the moment they are dreamed, will never quite walk beside you in this life. I cannot have a tropical garden. Not here. Not in a land where April mornings still bite the fingers, where the first frost is an old, familiar guest who never tires of coming early.

Palms and elephant ears, banana leaves lifting like sails against a perfect sky — these belong to another latitude, another life.

And yet — the ache of it remains.

Today, that ache softened. Because I remembered: the Summerhouse. Not a greenhouse. Not a glasshouse. But a place of dreams, with three strong walls to hold off the north winds, and a south-facing window where the light of summer can pour in generously.

A place where Strelitzia Nicolai might unfold. Where Spider Plants and Ferns can trail like pennants from their perches. Where a kumquat could glow against the tiles like a small, stubborn sun.

No, I cannot have the jungle at my doorstep. But perhaps I can have a room that remembers it — a room that hums quietly through four or five months of the year, carrying the breath of far greener places.

And perhaps that is enough.

I’d love to hear how others negotiate the dreams they know are just slightly out of reach. How do you make space for the gardens you cannot truly have — and still honour them? How do you carry the memory of a place you will never quite possess?

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The First Dreamers of the Pavilion of Summer:
Strelitzia Nicolai (The Queen in white form)
Citrus japonica (Kumquat Standard – maybe, just maybe, and something to drop into a G&T)
Chlorophytum comosum (Spider Plant – simple but friendly)
Epiphyllum anguliger (Fishbone Fern – crazy and odd)
Sansevieria cylindrica (Spear/Snake Plant)
Aspidistra elatior (Cast Iron Plant – it will probably outlive me!)
Spathiphyllum wallisii (Peace Lily – everywhere, but for a reason)
Euphorbia lactea ‘Cristata’ (Coral Euphorbia – alien or reef?)
Vigna caracalla (Snail Vine — treated as an annual for scent and spectacle)