ENGLAND’S GARDEN

Evening Star, Issue 19310, 24 July 1926, Page 21

ENGLAND’S GARDEN

A LAHI) OF TREES LOVELY COUNTRYSIDE [Written by Pilgrim, for the ‘Evening Star.’} When I turned this subject over in my mind afresh a few days ago, 1 was at Boar’s Hill, Oxford, a hill of woods, froJh which plovatiou you look on every side over a landscape of heart-catching beauty. A couple of miles away the spires and domes of Oxford rise out of the blue summer haze. The immortal town is in a hollow, from which the thickly wooded landscape flows away in lovely curves. There are trees everywhere—trees and green meadows, varied hero and there with the rich brown of tilled laud, or the yellow blaze of buttercups seen from Boar s Hill. Oxford seems to bo a world apart from the bustle of the groat cities, a little island of architectural beauty set in a sea of green. As you look at one of the richest views in England, as you turn round and see held and woodland stretching on all sides to tho horizon, it comes over you again that a great part of England is a garden, and one of the loveliest gardens in the world.

Thera is an idea in tho dominions that England is a huge industrial workshop, in which cities almost touch each other all over the couutiy. Colonials have read so much about the manufacturing development of England, and of the hideousness of much of her urban extensions during the industrial era, that it is not unnatural that they should have quite an adequate idea of tho area that is still m meadow and wood. It is quit© true that tlioro are large industrial areas, such, for example, as the cotton districts of Lancashire and tho West Biding of Yorkshire, to say nothing of London, and when von como into contact with it the depression of mean streets may be even deeper than that produced by reading; yet even hero qualifications must bo made : Ihe provision of parks in cities is striking, and in many places the delights, of the country landscape, with its wealth or wood and hedgerow, are just beside the city’s outskirts. The parks of London are most fascinating —not only -tho great ones, like Hyde Park, but tho Innumerable squares, gloriously green with trees and grass, and little beautifully la id-out corners and strips. It is quite a common oxpericnceto pass from a mean street suddenly into a little space of verdant beauty. During the general strike I passed by slow tram through one of the most hideous towns iu the Midlands. The whole outlook was of unrelieved ugliness; nothing but black factories and drab houses. I saw no green spaces. The following day I, talked with a man from this town, and heard him refer with pride, to the parks there. , , . It is, however, the rural landscape that is the great garden glory of England, and specially of the Southern and Midland Counties. Its extent and its loneliness must be seen to be believed. In contrast with New Zealand its characteristics are tidiness, mellowness, and freshness. Untidy straggling patches are rare. Where there are not meadows or ploughed land there are trees. The extent of the woodland comes as a surprise ; you travel for miles and miles, and there are always woods in the hills, woods of a green glory such as we in New Zealand have only a glimpse. _ The green of woodland and meadow is so delightfully varied and fresh; the foliage of beech and elm and oak is so luxuriant; spring and summer seem to be much more joyous seasons than in our laud of evergreen flora. The joyous tenderness of the green in the English spring is marvellously beautiful. Lot all this be considered by those who oppose the planting of English trees in New Zealand. Think of the oaks in the Auckland Domain, or the oaks and chestnuts in Christchurch; multiply this beauty to infinity, and you may form some idea of the beauty of the English spring. Picture an undulating landscape, where green fields melt into woods, and woods into fields; where the ploughed areas are brown and smooth; where hedges divide the fields; where trees line the roads, and innumerable lanes lead from the highways; where wild flowers brighten the woods and hedges; and where old brick farmhouses blend perfectly with the rich mellowness of the countryside. It may seem to you that there are uneconomic aspects of this beauty; that it would be better for England if there were less park land and more plough; but this reflection does not make the vista less entrancing. Tho beauty of the roads is a joy that never fails. From tho train you see the countryside spread out before you, and very delightful it is to watch it floating "by; but you do not see rural beauty intimately until you go on the roads. ' There must be thousands of miles of roads in England flanked by trees. I motored over many miles of such roads, and I have lost count of the many stretches in which the trees meet overhead. Nothing more lovely, for example, than the drive from London to Oxford could be imagined. The valley of the Thames is a dream. You go for miles at a time through woods, exquisite tunnels of green. Some country roads are little wider than lanes. There are trees meeting overhead — beeches, perhaps, and sunlight seen through beech leaves is particularly lovely—and a hedge on each side and perhaps now and then a stretch of a brick wall enclosing a garden, an old rod wall marvellously touched by age. The memory of one such in_ the valley of the Thames will live with me for ever. We left the main road and took to a winding lane amid great trees, a way so narrow that we could not have passed another car. On one side was a wall enclosing tho garden of an old bowse. W© came out at a lock in tbo woods, and bud tea in a little garden under the trees. But for the boats using the lock, we might have been a thousand miles from London. And then the lanes and tho wild flowers 1 When you come to England you begin to understand why so many poets have written about the spring. It is a case of compulsion. The wealth of the hedgerows is something that we do not know in New Zealand. There are primroses to be picked by the armful. The great glory of tho countryside ramble, however, is the bluebell. “ And every hyacinth the garden wears, dropped in her lap from soma once lovely head.” These wood hyacinths of the vast garden of England lie like a blue mist under the trees. Exquisite, frail, and ethereal, they seem to set the woods trembling with an unearthly beauty. England calls her sons- and grandsons with many voices. There is her power; there is her tradition of freedom and her parentage of every nation; there are her shrines of learning and religion; there are all her memories of mighty strivings. But most tender and most subtle is the call of the English countryside, of quiet fields and dreaming trees, of the England that is a vast garden. And I do not doubt that despite the growth of cities the English go on drawing priceless renewals of strength from the wells of this restful beauty.