Practical GARDENING

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28783, 2 January 1959, Page 12

Practical GARDENING

Specially Written for “The Press”by

T D. LENNIE, A.H.R.I.H., NZ.

Under The Greenwood Tree...

This restful view was taken in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, but it is one which may be duplicated wherever parkland vistas obtain. There is something particularly satisfying in the happy association of trees, grass and bright flower beds on a sunny day at all seasons of the year. While such gems of harmony are, perhaps, most frequently to be found in such places as the Botanic Gardens and the grounds of larger private homes, there is really no valid reason why they should be confined entirely to these. The owners of quite small sections are able to achieve equally satisfying vistas through

foresight and imagination when they are planning their gardens in the first place. Your true gardener is a practical visionary—a contradiction in terms, perhaps, but nevertheless true. The man who is merely content to regard his gardening as a “chore” to be performed with as good a grace as possible will seldom achieve a satisfactory or satisfying result. It is the gardener who can rest on his spade from time to time and “dream, dreams”; who possesses the gift, knack, art—call it what you will—of seeing things, not as they are but as they might be, and who combines the patience

of Job with the tenacity of a horse leech, that achieves real grandeur in the results of his efforts.

Great oaks from little acorns grow . . . and there is infinite satisfaction in making two blades grow where but one grew before; but it calls for Imagination and a kind of second sight to plant that acorn in the exact spot ~ which will be “just right” when the two blades have multiplied into a grassy sward beneath the feet of future generations. To the gardener who possesses this gift, a landscape garden in a window box would not prove an impossibility.