A GARDEN CAN BE many things: a magazine photo brought to life, a showpiece to impress passersby, a pile of drudgery, a source of food. To acclaimed Canadian writer Patrick Lane, garden means sanctuary and a healing place, where time ceases to exist and where life and death play out each day. Lane's garden is the setting for his award-winning 2004 book, There is a Season. The memoir, which last year won the inaugural $25,000 British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-fiction, has the distinction of being represented by several diverse categories in library catalogues, including Gardening; Poets, Canadian; and Recovering alcoholics. The book takes readers through Lane's year of recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, while moving through four seasons in his beloved garden. Each of the 12 chapters describes his monthly gardening experiences, and his relationships with the flora and fauna he encounters. There is a Season also charts the 66-year-old's tumultuous, heartbreaking life. He reveals what he learns in his garden, and how opening himself to its lessons began to heal his body. Once a berry farm, the now famous half-acre garden is just outside Victoria, on the Saanich Peninsula. Lane and his wife, poet Lorna Crozier, 57, are both Governor General's Award winners. Their tidy house, which is nearly a century old, is surrounded by what Lane calls "a garden made up of a lot of different rooms." In these rooms, he has sweated moving boulders, and has paused to admire flowering shrubs. There is a shade garden, a fishpond, a Japanese garden, a salad and herb bed, and a bamboo grove. A lemon tree, whose blossoms emit a scent tantalizing enough to knock a person over, sits on the raised deck. The couple's cats, Basho and Roxy, slip in and out of hidden spots. "This would be a very hard place to leave," says Crozier, whose most recent literary offering is Whetstone, 2005. In this, her 14th book of poetry, she makes several references to her cherished garden. It is the fourth outdoor space she and Lane have created from scratch. With each project, she says, "I've always felt we left the world more beautiful." There are hazards, though, in shining a spotlight on your garden. Since the publication of There is a Season, curious readers have sauntered by, trying to peer over the tall wooden fence for a glimpse of the writers' Eden and, perhaps, the garden's celebrated Adam and Eve. "Other gardeners desperately want to come in," says Lane, now working on his first novel and another poetry collection. "I don't want them to. I like the secrecy. We lead very private lives here. That aspect for me is really important." Within the garden, the yin and yang of daily life proceeds. Sometimes, as with the fate of a towering fir, aspects of the garden have been controversial. After a dozen years of storied debate, Lane and Crozier finally agreed the dominating tree should be felled. This opened a new chapter in the garden. "It's a new vista, a whole new miniature world," Crozier says of the fir's former terrain. It reminded them of the frontier they encountered when they purchased the property in 1991. The garden had been sadly neglected. "It was quite disgusting," Lane says. Portions of the overgrown yard served as a repository for old logs, plastic and other detritus. A rickety fence and gone-to-seed vegetable garden completed the picture. Lane was up to the physical challenge, having been a heavy equipment operator and mill worker earlier in his life. "Oh boy, a garden I can start with," he recalls saying. "I can create my own garden." The first three months were spent designing, with the two writers squabbling about what to do with the dozen Lombardy poplars, three apple trees, two old cherry trees, a couple of cedars and several firs. "He is loath to cut anything down," Crozier says with a wry smile. Some trees were initially removed, but Lane, who worked many seasons in British Columbia's clearcut forests, is reluctant to chop trees. That's why it took 12 years for them to agree on the removal of the sun-blocking fir. "It was traumatic," Crozier says. For Lane, the event was "dramatic." It reinforced how a relatively small change can have large ramifications. Through the weeks of one late summer and early fall, he transformed the reclaimed space into a place for meditation. He drew upon books and his memories, fusing the contemplative aspect of Japanese gardens, the subtle joys of Chinese greenery, and the bracing qualities of English fields. "Any esthetics come from what we think is beauty," he says. He developed a plan that he described as Eurasian, and presented it to Crozier. She studied the site and, relying on her own gardening instincts, added details. "Lorna has good advice," Lane says, admitting that he may initially ignore it. Eventually, he succumbs. When he does, watch out. His wife calls him a "binge gardener," and the former binge drinker agrees. Often, his gardening bouts unfurl while she is away on a retreat or teaching. "Every year, there's a new surprise," she says. The physical acts of unloading rocks or building a garden shed are welcome diversions for someone who has spent four hours putting words on a page. Lane likens himself to a bowerbird, creating living decorations to captivate his loved one upon her return. One consuming project was the Japanese-style meditation garden Lane built for a 12-episode television program, "Recreating Eden." Featured on the Gardening Channel three years ago, the show highlighted Canadian, American, French and English gardens. Preparing for the lengthy shoot was draining. "They take over your life," Lane says of the show's crew. Of course, the enclosed garden had to be in top shape. "We weeded and weeded and weeded," says the petite Crozier, describing herself as every gardener's dream companion. "I really do enjoy weeding. I can weed for hours. It's so cleansing." A creative writing professor at the University of Victoria, Crozier says getting down on her knees to look after the garden "grounds" her. "There is nothing more centering, relaxing, than putting your hands in soil." Having grown up in sunny Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Crozier is partial to grand floral displays. She likes strapping sunflowers, rambling sweet peas and fragrant roses. Their hydrangeas supply flamboyant blooms. "She likes things that are big and showy," Lane says. "I don't like that very much. I'm more attracted to muted greens. I'd be happy with only green." His taste in greenery appears to rule the garden. It embraces hostas, ferns, and nine varieties of bamboo, a plant that, in Canada, survives only on Vancouver Island and the temperate Vancouver area. Once, Lane's favourite garden spot was near the fishpond, where the bamboo whispers and shivers. Now that the protective fir is gone from there, a shade garden by the side of the house, with metal chairs and a table, calls out to him. "I feel really comfortable there," he says. Crozier's choice locale is under the apple tree. She loves to sit there on a wooden loveseat in late afternoon, book in hand. Their friend and fellow writer and gardener, Wendy Morton, defines the Lane/Crozier landscaping collaboration as both practical and inspiring. "It's not like any garden I've seen," she says. "It's like a garden of their imagination. It's as if the plants are kind of poems in themselves." With Lane working at home much of the time, he uses yard chores as an excuse to get away from quill and quire. Come summer, when lawns turn brown on the usually rain-starved island, he can easily move watering hoses three or four times a day. His wife wants to have underground sprinklers installed, particularly since they travel a great deal. That way, she says, it would be easier to have a friend care for their property. Aided by Crozier's fastidious weeding, the plants thrive without pesticides or herbicides. "If you have a healthy garden, you don't need them," Lane says. Pill bugs and slugs, the West Coast scourge, do pose problems. The couple could legally keep six chickens, which would help with the bugs, but they fear their beloved cats could have a "fowl" reaction. They've also stopped buying $50 koi since herons ate some of the fish. When the great, gliding birds spy a fishpond below, "It's like a McDonald's sign," Crozier says. Once, the couple enjoyed dashing off to a party, wine bottle in hand. Now, Crozier says, "One of our greatest delights is going to the nursery. We get extremely excited by what we see." "It's a very tempting place," Lane agrees, "very tempting."