THE GOOD OF GARDENS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 45, 4 February 1928, Page 9

THE GOOD OF GARDENS

(By “Lector.”) In a recent issue of the “English Review’’ there was published a most moving story. A drunken sot, the despair of his wife and the object of the contempt of his acquaintances, seemed to have no other thought than to study the opening and closing hours of the village inn. A tire happened, and the inn was burnt to the ground. It happened to be the only ‘public’’ witniu many miles raduia.

Un his way farther afield to find the sort of entertainment he sought, the man happened to puss by a tract of laud winch had been let out in allotment. He saw the diligent amateurs at their loving task of tilling the soil; and as he looked, memory pictures, long forgotten, floated again across ins mind, and he saw the garden he had known once, and ill which he had found happiness strangely alien from the uectic jollity or evenings or carousal. Hie desire to achieve renown once more as a flower-grower awoke in him, and he enquired of one nearby it-any o* the land were available. He was directed to the owner, who gave him a generous allotment for a small sum per year.

The man retraced his steps to the village, and with the money he had intended to spend otherwise, bought a few necessary tools. His evenings were spent in his plot, and the understanding wife had a pot of ale on his supper-table always when he returned. Weeks passed, and months. He ffilt, as he viewed his bit of earth, what a wonderful thing it was to be the only person in the world who knew just what flowers would come up out of the black soil, and where.

The flowers came, now here, now there, just as he had planned. Night after night he culled the best of them and made the little cottage fragrant ana the heart of his wile unutterably happy. The season advanced, and the flowers were in the fulness- of their bloom. He stood in the midst of his plot, a strange angling at his heart. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to see the owner of the land. “Well,” he said, “what do you tnmk of it?” The owner replied, “it isn’t what I think of it, my man. It’s what these other men think. There they are, working hard to produce food from the ground, while you fritter away your time growing nothing but flowers. 1 have had a deputation this afternoon, and unless you choose to grow foodstuffs, 1 must ask you to give up this allotment.” “You mean,” gasped the man. “that I’m to grow cabbages and turnips and no flowers?” When he reached home, the man was met by his wife. “Why,” she cried, “what’s this? What a lovely lot of flowers I Have you grown all these?” The man threw his double arm-ful on the floor. “Ay,” he growled, “and that’s, the lot. I’m not allowed to grow any more, so 1 pulled them all,’’ He moved to the door. “Won’t you have supper?” askeu his wife. “No,” he grunted. “The village pub s been mended. I’m going tor a drink.” And he came home drunk. I’ve told the story briefly, but so as to bring out its point. “A garden is a lonesome thing, God wot,” and the flowers, as they bloom, may be to many not only flowers, but uplifting of heart and mind. The story quoted above may serve as an introduction to the following passage from “The Garden That I Love,” by Alfred Austin. “You will find much resemblance between flowers and human beings; for they too grow reserved under coldness or maltreatment, and respond with almost feminine alacrity to every sympathetic endeavour to apprehend them. But, most of all, the cultivation of a garden tends to foster that sense of kinship with the lowly in which you have been trained ; since there are none who love their garden so tenderly as the poor. Is it not a consoling thought that what, after human affection, is, 1 think, the deepest and most abiding of all pleasures, is well within the reach of the humblest cottager? Only yesterday I saw, in a little village garden, a cluster of Crown Imperials that put shame to the best I can boast; and 1 know full well their higher beauty was but the stalk and blossom of deeper devotion. . . . The moment I enter -a garden 1 know at once whether it is the owner’s garden or the gardener’s garden. Nearly all largely and costly gardens are gardeners’ gardens, and for my part 1 would not take them as a gift. 1 don’t think 1 ever remember envying the gardens of the great; but 1 continually see cottage gardens, little village or secluded plots cultivated and made beautiful by the pathetic expedients of the poor, which seem to have a charm mine cannot rival. Almost every garden, and certainly my own. sins against the law of economy. There are too many flowers; and effect, surprise, and suggestiveness are lost. I have seen one clambering rose, one lingering hollyhock, glorify a cottage home, arrest one’s step, and prolong one's meditations, more than all the terraces of Chatsworth.”