When I first came across Kahlil Gibran’s poem, On Children, back in the 1980s, I was taken by the way in which those words are a guide to parenting. He said:

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and the daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

As I looked at the images caught on my trail camera in the garden, it struck me that, similarly, our gardens are not our gardens. We are merely their custodians for a period of time. Badgers have lived where my garden resides for many more years than I have; foxes too. It’s a humbling thought and one I hold as I go about tending my garden, ensuring there is water for the wildlife, flowers for the bees to seek pollen, safe places for hedgehogs.

My garden is not my garden. I share it with many others and I feel privileged to do so.

Fox July 2025