GARDEN DECORATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 256, 29 October 1929, Page 11

GARDEN DECORATION.

(By ODETTE TCHEBNINE.)

' have just made a bright discovery regarding gardens. Apparently "Little lumps of plaster, and little blobs of paint, can make the mingiest garden look like what it ain't." However, let me enlarge on my theme. Town gardens, half gardens, terraces or excuses for gardens are the spots that will benefit mostly from the new decorativo innovation, summer, autumn, winter' and spring. Gnomes are in fashion among the discerning garden decorators of to-day. Among the gladioli, roses, and fat, crinkly carnations in the window displays of super-florists the gaily coloured earthenware gnomes disport themselves. One holds a gourd on his shoulder where a plant would flourish or where he could support cut flowers; another sits fishing cross-legged on an earthenware stool, and another pushes a terracotta wheelbarrow where even the one-pot gardener who loves flowers but has no room for them can plant quite a lot of trouble for himself, and food for thought for all the sparrows in the neighbourhood. I say food for thought because I have ail idea that birds would look once at the gnome-imp-brownie —whatever you care to call him—and would beat a hasty retreat. The gnomes are life-size, you see, just over one foot in height, as all proper "little people" should be, they are Devon pixies or leprachauns from Killarney and their rosy, smiling faces half covered in long, white beards, and the eves twinkling under their jaunty, pointed red caps are full of gnomish . wisdom that would do the barest garden good, and would coax the most recalcitrant bulb to flower. The boldest of bold thrushes, on coming up against one of these gaily-clad gnomes in green neckerchiefs and little scarlet coats would understand there was to be no nonsense here, "So leave those calceolaria alone, please." And he would go away, even if he were one of those thrushes who hop up to one, wondering if one is a worm or part of a world they own.

Bceently, as I was passing down a neighbouring great gay road towards the London Park, where Peter Pan and Bima are not on speaking terms, I noticed a gnome in one of those flagged gardens where the,* houses are built right back and away from the gate. The gnome held at the end of his rod a notice board on which was written: "Little gardens made interesting." He had no doubt inspired the inauguration of a garden .reform society, and this was their request for custom

I did not stop, for I have no garden, only a stone terrace, which I would like to transform, but where my landlady likes to keep ladders and old flower tubs/ no doubt as a sort of trapeze and happy hunting ground for her semiPersian cat. But I should dearly love a gnome, though what I should do with him in a flatlet I do not quite know. I might have two of them, one on either side of my window sill, bearing flowers in season in their gourds, but the ground landlord might object to my bringing a little colour* to the neighbourhood. (Bright young gnomes are as unknown to ground landlords as the Bright Youiig People.)

However, if anybody sent jne a gnome or two on trial, I should make an attempt at "brighter and better" windows, and if the policeman on point duty came and ordered me to remove them because the sight of them caused an. obstruction in the traffic, I should pack my little fairy men with laving care and dispatch them to country friends, who would wonder what on earth these Londoners will think of next. — ("Star" and A.A.N.S.)