"GREEN FINGERS"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

"GREEN FINGERS"

LIGHTER SIDE OF GARDENING Gardeners, good, bad and indifferent, owe it to their sense of humour to beg, borrow or otherwise acquire " Green Fingers," an engaging little book of poems which do not indeed teach the bad gardener to become a better, or even a more patient, one, but nevertheless it will console him with the happy thought that he is not alone in his dejection, but is one of many unfortunates, relentlessly pursued from season to season by slug, snail, green-flv and woolly aphis. The poet, Reginald Arkell, recommends his book as a present for a good gardener, but one is convinced throughout that it is with the bad gardener that his true sympathies lie, everyone being welcome inside his garden gate—Except, of course, the ass who pays: 'My lupins have been out for days.' 1 ' Mr. Arkell shows a pretty turn of parody, in addition to a delightful sense of humour and a delicate appreciation of rhythm and words which save his poems from degenerating, like most allegedly humorous verse, into doggerel. Although the lilies of this particular gardener need none of the proyerhial gilding, the book owes much of its attraction to Eugene Hastain's illustrations, a frontispiece satirically named "A Lovesome Thing—God Wot!" being so poignant a comment on the gardener's lot that it all but brings a tear to thr eye! "Green Fingers" is dedicated "To Mv Landlord," a compliment unexpected enough to bewilder tho reader until the poet explains: I'll tell you a rather remarkable thine: The wall of my garden belongs to the King. " Green Fingers," by Reginald Arkell. (Herbert Jenkins.)