Ode to a Garden Party
Warm grass, cold wine. A blanket on the ground and sunlight dancing over your eyelids and ankles. A glut of summer food, with a gathering of your people. If a garden party is to be perfect, the sun ought to be drumming, the playlist impeccable and we, gilded versions of ourselves.
A garden party is something some of us have lingered within – but many of us experience these gorgeous gatherings through literature or movies – through the beauty of others and their luck of living in a way or place in the world. A golden moment in time and an ‘other’ set of people.
The Garden Party by the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield, at its shiny surface, speaks of the coruscation of the middle classes in suburban Wellington and the quiet despair of those who are not. It’s a world of lily lawns and cream puffs, of couples strolling, greeting and pressing rare joy into each other. What happiness to be with people who are all just as happy – surrounded by smiling eyes and extravagance. Mansfield showed us both an elevated and fragile happiness, and the rareness of these days. How our ways of living make them poignant markers in our existence.
But beauty is for all – we just have to give ourselves the permission and time to make something truly memorable. It doesn’t have to be often or very big – a lawn is optional. To create something exquisite for four or fourty is wonderful. If the rain joins you – it really wont matter.
Over the years, I have hosted many parties, but a handful of glorious al-fresco ones are fixed in my memory for their rare blend of sunshine and perfect aestheticism. On those occasions, we seem to unfurl like June roses and revel in our luck. One party was an extravagant birthday and yes, the weather was ideal. Another a beach party with bare feet, the freshest seafood and the coldest champagne. Yet another was ice cream and honeysuckle with soft, quiet jazz filling us up with a joy that was so potent, I still can conjure the sensations of that day.
To be brave enough to hold a party outside brings both the opportunity for magic and misery – because we need these golden days to be reliable. The meringues to be crisp, the salads magnificent and all the friends to sway and play together. It is so delicious to have an excuse for eating out of doors – and therefore so very special.
Mansfield understood how attractive it is to make life into a trope – in the form of a perfect garden party. But there is a difference between theatre and reality, which is why many of us seem to be more comfortable with a less courageous gathering, the theatre of it all being so far away from where we now engage with food. Being bright seems to be outside of our skill set and knowledge. It is truly scary to lay the fate of your day in the hands of the weather gods, let alone attempting canapes for 30. We have given in to the less god like service of supermarkets. A garden party is a guaranteed success if we stick to pizza and prosecco but wouldn’t it be glorious to attempt lemon curd ice cream – imagine the joy. We are heightened and a little giddy at an occasion where all the elements have been thought about, for the hue of the napkins and pudding to align, the champagne perfectly dry and the food to elicit literal gasps, and where it all comes together in magical unison. We gulp down the rare components that give us such intense pleasure.
Mansfield’s passionate peer, Virginia Woolf, wrote of the delicate balance and wobble of perfect days being needed as much as wanted. Between the Acts was her last and most striking novel: seeped with a sense of despair and malaise about the coming war, it captured that last hurrah before everything changed.
Garden parties mark and highlight change. Weddings, flower shows, and summer birthdays command these chances to come together and for us to be truly happy. They’re an excuse to slide up to press warm cheeks – and clink crisp glasses. Kisses, voices and laughter take over the summer lawns as we turn our limbs and expectations to the sun. These afternoons slowly ripen, slowly fade and always close their petals. We live in the magic of the moment – and then it is done.
In their perfection, these gatherings crack the door open on the cipher of real living. The last lick of the ice cream becomes a profound meditation on life, death, and the tussle between moments of magic and everyday reality.
But they are true, and parties like these should be loved, planned for and hoped for – with magic seeping in at every bite, sip and smile. It’s just what we need – isn’t it?
About the writer: A colourist and author, Ellis grew up in Papakura in South Auckland and later moved to London. She now helms a purveyor of breathable paint, Atelier Ellis, and champions young craftspeople with her ‘Maker’s Programme.’ Parties are reminders of the fleeting beauty of life – like her paints they are packed with emotional resonance.
Written for Konfekt
Featured colour: Sadhika
Photography by Ellen Christina Hancock