If You Have A Garden And A Library, You Have Everything You Need
- Agnieszka Wolsoncroft
- Jun 21
- 6 min read
by Agnieszka Wolsoncroft
I was standing in Queen Mary's Garden in Regent's Park when I found her.
London, summer, one of those afternoons when the city stops feeling like a city and becomes something softer. I'd been walking slowly through the roses - there are hundreds of them there, and each one has a small plaque with its name, which I find quietly wonderful, the idea that every rose deserves to be known by name.
Most were beautiful. Some were extraordinary. And then there was this one.
Vibrant pink melting into more soft and pastel hues, so fragrant I stopped mid-step. I stood there for a moment just breathing it in - that particular rose smell that isn't like any other smell in the world, warm and complex and completely itself.
I looked at the plaque. Free Spirit.
I stood there and thought: yes. That's exactly it. That's exactly how I feel right now, in this garden, surrounded by all this beauty. Free.
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Cicero wrote: "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
I've been thinking about what he really meant by that.
Because I didn't have a garden in London. We rented a flat in Ealing - a beautiful part of the city, and I was grateful for it - but the roses in the grounds around our building weren't my roses. I couldn't plant anything. I couldn't dig my hands into soil and decide what would grow there. So I went looking for beauty instead.
Walpole Park and Pitzhanger Manor, where the magnolias and rhododendrons bloomed in colours I couldn't name. Chelsea Physic Garden, tucked quietly behind its walls. Battersea Park. Chiswick House. Kew Gardens. And Queen Mary's Garden in Regent's Park, where a rose called Free Spirit stopped me in my tracks. I didn't own any of it. But I was at home in all of it.
And I wonder now if that's what Cicero was really pointing toward - not the possession of a garden, but the need for one. The soul's orientation toward beauty and growing things. The understanding that we need somewhere green and alive and fragrant, somewhere that reminds us that the world is generous and unhurried and full of things that bloom without being asked.
You don't need to own a garden to have one, in that sense. You need to be someone who seeks beauty. Who notices it. Who feels, standing among roses or eucalyptus or banksia, that you belong there.
Here in Perth, both my garden and Kings Park give me that feeling. The flowering eucalyptus and banksia are extraordinary - colours and shapes that still surprise me after years of living here, still make me stop and look properly. Different from Regent's Park roses, wilder and more ancient. But the feeling is the same. Free. At home. Here.
*
Books work the same way, I think.
In Ealing, my flat had several bookshelves that I filled steadily and happily. But what I loved just as much - what I still love - is sitting in a library that belongs to everyone. The particular atmosphere of a public library, the hush of it, the sense that every person there has come in search of something.
Now I take Anya to our local library. She has her corner - there's a children's section where you can rearrange soft cushions however you like, which she takes very seriously - and I go and find my books, and we stay as long as we want. She reads. She plays. She picks things up and puts them down and picks them up again.
She loves books. I am so grateful for that. She will be able to travel to so many places, live so many lives, understand so many things she hasn't encountered yet. That's what books give you. Not just knowledge - Cicero's library - but imagination. The Einstein half of the equation.
At home, my own collection grows. I add to it regularly and feel a particular satisfaction each time. Some of my most treasured books are ones signed by friends.
Gabriel Weston - surgeon, mother, writer, one of the most remarkable people I know - has signed two of her books for me. The third is waiting. I need to get to London for that one. She lives there.
Laurie Steed, whose generosity as a mentor has shaped my writing and especially my editing in ways I'm still discovering, has signed three.
And last Thursday I was at the launch of Fiona Wilkes' debut novel, published by Fremantle Press. A debut author, a beautiful book set in London - and the moment I held it, all my London memories came rushing back. The parks. The roses. The libraries. The flat in Ealing where the bookshelves filled up slowly and something was being built without my fully knowing it.
A signed copy from a friend who just published her first novel is not just a book. It's proof that the dream is possible. That you write and you persist and one day someone holds your words in their hands.
I put it on the shelf carefully.
*
Cicero also said something else. "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
The same man. Two thoughts that belong together.
Because I think this is the connection: when you have the orientation of someone who seeks gardens and libraries - who looks for beauty and wisdom not as luxuries but as needs - gratitude comes naturally. You're already paying attention. You're already noticing what's real and good and worth having.
The Free Spirit rose I didn't own but stood beside and breathed in. The magnolias in Walpole Park on a Tuesday afternoon. The library where Anya rearranges cushions and I find next month's reading. The signed books from friends who write and persist and make things.
None of it required ownership. All of it required attention.
That's appreciation. That's the middle element of the TAG Method - not the journaling, not the feeling, but the noticing. Training your eyes and your heart to see what's already there, what's already generous, what's already free.
*
When Anya is old enough, I'll introduce her to Anne of Green Gables. The dream of adopting a daughter was born in that book - a twelve-year-old girl in Poland reading about a red-haired orphan finding her family, and knowing, with quiet certainty, that one day she would do the same. I wanted to call her Ania. The Polish spelling of Anne. And when the call finally came, years later, they told me her nickname was Anya. Same name. Same pronunciation. The family I'd imagined on those pages is the family sitting beside me now.
She'll understand Anne, I think. A girl who found beauty everywhere she looked, who named things she loved and claimed them as her own through the act of loving them. Who had very little, materially, and felt extraordinarily rich.
She'll understand it, I think. She already understands the cushion corner at the library. She already understands the dandelion wish.
She's learning, slowly and without knowing she's learning, that having everything you need doesn't mean owning everything you want. It means being the kind of person who recognises what's worth having when you find it.
A garden you can breathe in. A library you can disappear into. A rose with a name that fits exactly how you feel. That's everything.
With love and gratitude,
Agnieszka
*
If you grew up without a garden or without books - if beauty and stories felt like things that belonged to other people's lives - this is for you. You don't need to have had them then to claim them now. A garden can be a park you walk through on your lunch break, a single plant on a windowsill, a rose you stop beside and breathe in. A library can be one shelf, a borrowed book, an afternoon in a public library with a child who rearranges cushions. Cicero wasn't describing a privilege. He was describing a need - and needs can be met in unexpected ways, at any age, starting today. Thanksgiving is seeking beauty even when it isn't yours yet. Appreciation is noticing it when you find it. Gratitude is the feeling of realising you already belong there.
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Come back in two weeks. I'll be here with a story about love that lasts - about eighteen years of choosing each other, and what that looks like in the ordinary moments that build a life.
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A New Chapter Begins
Next Sunday I'll be launching A Moment of TAG on Substack.
Every second Sunday I'll be sharing a reflection inspired by the TAG Method: Thanksgiving, Appreciation and Gratitude.
The first word we'll explore is Visibility.
I'd love you to join me.
Read more about gratitude and the TAG Method: GRATITUDE & THE TAG METHOD
If you'd like to read my previous posts, click here:
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