A MYSTERY GARDEN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10167, 23 July 1924, Page 7

A MYSTERY GARDEN

MINIATURE JAPANESE LANDSCAPE. For many years our mystery garden has been a source of delight and wonderment, writes M.V.V. in the “Manchester Guardian.” It began life as a miniature Japanese landscape, laid out on a porcelain base about a foot in length. On its mossy banks, separated by a winding pebbled path, flourished a gnarled cypress and two ancient pine trees,' each at least four inches high, and near a summer-house, at the foot of a prehistoric two-inch boulder stone, sat a meditative Japanese gardener. Such was the garden when we received it as a gift one Christmas Day, and thus it remained for two or three years. Every spring the tiny trees put forth some additional half-inch of growth, while the moss on the hanks clustered thick and green, with no trace of weeds or other alien intruders. Sfive for a weekly visit to the scullery sink for watering and subsequent drainage, the little encampment never left its place on a table in a window. Then gradually the trees began to make less growth, and before long one of the pines withered completely. Very soon after this a miracle occurred. On the mossy banks stealthily, one ofter another, peeped forth mysterious tight-curled fronds. First came a lady fern in miniature; then a branched and fingered petrys crept out at the foot of the cypress, and next a hart’s-tongue made its appearance on twindled the ferns continued to grow and flourish. Specimen after specimen has been removed and planted out, and now, all about the one remaining tree, fresh fronds are uncurling. It is a beautiful and charming mystery for which we seek no solution. _ Perhaps the fairies that lurk in running water could explain the wonder*