Gardening and Landlords.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20552, 21 May 1932, Page 14

Gardening and Landlords.

There was a report in yesterday's cable news that many Sydney tenants are paying their rent in eggs, milk, and garden produce, owing to the shortage of ready money; and this will probably cause some alarm among the professional middle classes and all those whose labour is not directly productive. An impoverished farmer or market gardener can at least pacify his landlord with a fat lamb or a bag of onions; but what has the doctor, the teacher, or the poet to offer? Few landlords would remit a month's rent in return for an operation on the appendix or a course in irregular French verbs. Fewer still would be fobbed off with a sonnet. The painful truth is that, should the existing but shaky system of credit and exchange go smash, the professional classes will find themselves the abjects and pitiful skulkers of the community. And the moral is that those of them who are not interested in gardening should try to be, for if civilisation meekly obeys Mr Wells and breaks down, garden plots' may be better than insurance policies or overdrafts, and the best security be that which Candide found among his cabbages. This revival of home gardening, if it conies, will not be entirely bad. Seedy men will cultivate better health with their beans and lettuces, and the equability which is the most noticeable (if rather dull) virtue of spare-time planters and weeders will gradually steal in upon angry regrets and smooth and sooth them away. Only survey the prospect with sufficient care to overlook the depressing features, and it is most happy and attractive. So would not be, however, the appearance of now charming garden suburbs; for citizens gardening with a view to barter will put their faith not in larkspur but in leeks, and their lawns will end as they began, in potato crops.