COMING OF SPRING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 62, 10 September 1910, Page 9

COMING OF SPRING.

THE COLOUR OF HOPE. MORNING IN THE GARDENS. . Cammile Desmoulins, rushing out ©4 the Cafe de Foy, sybilline in face : his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol ; calls for a rallying sign. Cockades ; green ones; — "The Colour "i Hope!" So does Ca.rlyle> inimitably describe the French Revolution passing irom the abstract into the concrete. The colouring hope has become at* because of it& association with the spring time, when bare and nfckedi limbs are clad in green again and all nature springs, as it were, from the grave once more to meet the sun. The colour of hope brightens every city street where any deciduous tree o» i shrub is to be seen. In Willis-street! a coupla of elms have to-day one solitary but whole, freshly uncurled leaf,but every twig is tipped with promise.)' A great weeping willow tree near .Aro* street, well-advanced in, leaf, suggest* an arrested cascade of emeralds : the horse-chestnut in Abel Smith-stTeefe seems dormant, but its great, brownj gummy cases of unopened' buds • aret ready to burst into fronds of silky ( green and dazzling candelabra ; the ashes near by are sbill Jeaf bare; but the sycamore buds are daintily unfolding.; In fact in' the dingiest of city streets, where one of these deciduous immigrant* is to be found there to-day is the colour of hope, growing brighter every; hour. In the Botanic Gardens, however, there are now already the early comer* of the carnival of flowers. The , wall flowers are opening out, and brown and scarlet butterflies are now to be seen hovering above the blooms. .A fringe of golden aiareissi is spread along, the topj of the green, bank by the wallflowers,' and sway and nod in the soft sprmg breeze as if expressing the "spring 1 * they feel in articulate speech. Beds dt polyanthus — the aristocratic cousin ot the primrose — the colour of milk, batter or mahogany, seem to be ashamed' of their leaves, covering them with ■ their skirts, as ifc were. MOVEMENT. Spring in. the gardens is suggested! by other things than, flowers. Thai spring rustling is irresistible. Th« thrushes, as they flit heavily from branch to branch, express it in bell-. like notes. It has evidently touched, too, an obviouriy honeymooning young husband who is carefully peeling an orange for his bride as both sit enraptured each with other beneath the shade of an Oregonian spruce pine. The clost-cropped lawns, the feafchety bamboos, the shooting hydrangeas, *U vivid with the colour of hope, foretall the opulence of summer, its weaithSf its flowers and its fruits. In tfo rosary are signs of future joy, the time, and that soon when one may say. Look to the Rose that blows about us^ Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the world I olow ; At once the silken tassel of my purse Tear, and' its treasure on the sarden throw." • With an apparent recklessness . that affrights the man who does not know, the skilled gardener prunes his roses almost to the ground. In a few weeks or so these rose trees, now so low, will have become tall bushes bending down with the weight of fragrant blooms. As it is, they are well out in leaf, some of a pale green, like malachite, others of a deeper shade as the acqnamarine, and others still darker like weathered bronze; but all of the colour of hope. And what stories will the names of rose conjure up— Malmaison, Marechal Niel, Pompadour ! Even names like i Frau Karl Druschki and Mrs. Grant at least suggest a story of some rosegrower's cup of joy brim-filled and overrun. As the roses advance in foliage and bud, so the camellias recede from notice, the graceful but insecure flowers dropping petal by petal till nought but the dark, glossy mass of leaves remains. ART AND NATURE. "The spring stuff is now coming on,"' is how the gardener describes the present season, and he turns to his scythe or shears again. Business is business, even in the Gardens. All the beauty, apart from that of the native bush, depends upon good management, consummate skill, and experience bought at the price of years of toil and study. Even the native bush requires dose attention in its way, but not quite so much i skill and labour as the flower beds and lawns. The gardens of England are its glory, and in many a nobleman's place the cultivated portion of Wellington's Botanic Gardens would be lost ; yet but few of them are better kept or are more representative of -the flora of the five continents than thos« of this city. The acreage may not -be there, but the- variety is. . The successful head gardener must be a cosmopolitan with no racial prejudice, welcoming the cactus of Arizona as cordially as the waratah. True, he sees no beanty itt the plebian marigold or * errant, periwinkle, but he tolerates them, as smalt boys, admirable — in their place. THE RIGHT TIME. The best time to see the Gardens ii unquestionably in the forenoon or quite late in 'the afternoon," no matter what the time of year. Even in the rain they are very bcantiful. From now onwards they will, no donbt, be more attractive from the point of view of tints and shades — colour of hope is always there. When the branches of exotics are black and bare, when the mist and rain blur all outlines, shorten all perspectives, dim all hues of the flowers, then the native bush, always green, leaf succeeding leaf, bud following bud, seemingly, without intermission speak of eternity, and, after all, the immutability of things since before Eden was first planted.