ON GARDENS

Southland Times, Issue 19223, 19 April 1924, Page 9

ON GARDENS

PLEASURE OF GARDENING. (By Robert Francis). Nearly all the Anthologies contain the lovelylmes of T. E. Brown, a poet who has not obtained the place that he ought to have in the public mind and heart:— “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not— Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; 44 *Tis very sure God walks in mine.” Brown was a lover of Nature and a lover of the God of Nature. He loved the broad spaces, the mountains and, above all, the sea. A fool might lurk behind a rock. “But The sea is open, and you can tell when you are alone; and the dear old chap is so confidential! I will trust him with my secret.” It is clear that the garden Brown had in view was a flower garden, one carefully tended, with a fine rose plot, and a shady corner where ferns displayed their fronds in all their witchery of green. In parts, at anyrate, it would be similar to the one of which Walter de la Mare says:— Speak not—whisper not; Here bloweth thyme and beigamat; Softly on the evening hour Secret herbs their spices shower. Dark-spiced rosemary and myrrh, Lean-stalked, purple lavender; Hides within her bosom, too,

All her sorrows, bitter rue.’* Evidently Brown and de la Mare are of one mind with Bacon, who says, in one of his famous essays:—“Gold Almighty first planted a garden. And, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshments to the spirits of Man,” The sight of a trim, well-ordered garden is a continual feast to the writer’s eyes and heart. The glorious odours are a perpetual delight. The varieties of forms and colourings of the flowers always entrance. The first spot to which he goes almost every morning, summer or winter, shine or shower, is that where the flowers are blooming in their beauty. Yet he has to confess —shall it be with shamp of face?—that he is not a lover of the operations of gardening. Or may he put it in this way, that he loves gardening so much that he couldlie down beside it. Not that he is a Weary Willie—anathema be to him who says so! But there are so many other things to do: books to read, things to write, visits to pay, and he blesses himself there are so many who are similarly minded. Especially is there one, who meantime has fled afar, leaving his spade, his hoe and his rake, to congratulate themselves that they are among the unemployed, and fortunately not needing a dole. That worthy gentleman, who dearly loves a garden, has repeatedly confessed that he has, like the writer, often to be driven to the needful work at the point, happily not of the sword, but of the broomstick. He has greater pleasure in a racquet, a golf club, or a book, than in any garden implement. So the writer can rejoice con amore that in his fall from gardening grace he has such an estimable confrere. On the other hand, there are many who are enthusiasts of the spade, most of them, however, of a culinary disposition. And when the fruits of their work are seen in big cabbages, fine turnips, carrots, parsnips, potatoes and peas, there is no holding them in. There is one in particular before the writer’s mind. He is a canny Scot, who, for the sake of gardening, has forsworn bowls for a time, and anyone who knows what a keen bowler feels, will be able to realise the sacrifice he makes. A holiday for him is a day for the garden. In that sacred enclosure you are sure to find him from morn till eve. Every spare hour is devoted to it. And the fruits are many. A day in the garden blows all the cobwebs away, banishes all care, gives a wholesome appetite, ministers to health, as well as helps towards the succulent dishes that graces his own and sometimes the writer’s table. If

ever any man deserved to see the desert blossom as the rose that man is the one mentioned, a man full of energy, a man with a kindly heart, and a generous disposition. Long may he abide in strength to ply the weapons of his peaceful and profitable warfare with the foes of all good gardeners, those weeds of which Shakespeare truly said that they “grow apace.” The writer’s garden exemplifies the truth of that. There they are in all their mocking profusion, sorrel, couch-grass, fathen and all the others that laugh at one’s efforts to extirpate them. One slaves for days, determined that he will finish them for every and a day. He exults as he lays hold of them with a vengeful hand. He piles them up for destruction with a vindictive spirit. He glories when his task is done. Alas! A few weeks pass by, and lo! there are their children, tens of thousands of them, lifting up their heads above the earth, and smiling at one as it were with fiendish glee. “You slew our fathers and our mothers, you Exulted as you flung them on the pyre,

But we, their children, rise upon your view, And we will plague and plague you till you tire. You slew our parents, we’ll avenge the dead, And into every nook and corner spread.” One owns that there are some he touches with regret. There is the dandelion, which has as perfect a flower as a chrysanthemum, and there, too, is the daisy, that modest crimson-tipped flower that Burns has immortalised. Sentiment, perhaps, plays a part regarding the latter. At anyrate one often wishes he could spare them both, for they speak of the far away, and of days when they were pulled and strung for a crown of gold or a daisy chain. Pilgrims, like one’s self, one has a fellowfeeling for them, and one wishes he could spare them from the uprooting spades or the sharp edge of the hoe. The mention of the “far away” brings memories of gardens in other scenes, where lilac and laburnum will speedily be flowering in their beauty. It makes one dream, as Rupert Brooke dreamt in the Cafe des Westens, at Berlin:— Just now the lilac is in bioom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the Carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow.” A little later the poet falls to contrasting his immediate surroundings with things as they are at the Vicarage:— “there the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about these hedges blows An English unofficial rose.” But one must read the whole poem to get the full force of the contrast. Now, neither Berlin nor Grantchester sees him or knows him—he, young, radiant, richlyendowed, has passed into the Garden of God, with an amaranthine crown upon his brow.