Book of Gardens 



THE MIRACLE WORKERS OF THE GARDEN 



In the Humbling Touch of Earth Is Found the Exalting Mystery 



of the Garden s Gods 



■ RICHARD Le GALLIENNE 



WE take gardens, as we take all our mer- 

 cies nowadays, too lightly. 



Recently a friend of mine, speaking of his 

 garden, said to me that it made him very 

 "humble". It was one of those remarks for 

 which one grows increasingly grateful; for hu- 

 mility, the only attitude by which it is possible 

 to know anything worth knowing, has become 

 an almost extinct species of human feeling; 

 and I am far from sure that I can safely leave 

 my friend's remarks entirely without commen- 

 tary. So few feel like him, that for many, I 

 fear, it will have no meaning. Of course, he 

 meant that his garden continually brought be- 

 fore him, so impressively, with such fresh won- 

 der, the miracle and the mystery of the vital, 

 the cosmic process. 



No one yet knows how or why a ilower 

 grows. We have discovered radium, and em- 

 ployed delicate and terrible natural forces to 

 fearful ends; but we are as far from knowing 

 that as ever. Still, as the present writer once 

 had the honor of saying: "A grass-seed and a 

 thimbleful of soil set all the sciences at 

 nought." Still Tennyson's "flower in the cran- 

 nied wall" baffles all the pundits. 



Unless you feel like that about your garden, 

 you might as well have no garden. Indeed, 

 you have no garden. You may have a 

 dozen gardeners — but that is another 

 matter. As a general rule, one may say: 

 the more gardeners, the less garden. For 

 the real garden is born, and very little 

 made. 



No one has ever really loved a garden 

 without having had at times the sense of 

 a divine presence dwelling there, moving 

 softly behind curtains of leaves, some 

 bus}', watchful kindness secretly at work 

 with blade and blossom and the mount- 

 ing sap, and falling suddenly silent at 

 our first foot-fall, like a shy bird. A 

 .'ancy, of course — and yet would there be 

 anything more remarkable in the fact of 

 certain natural processes being presided 

 over by especially appointed spiritual 

 guardians than there is wonder in the 

 processes themselves? Though there be 

 no individual accessible divinity behind 

 the blossoming of an apple orchard, the 

 process itself is divine, and just as mys- 

 terious as if there were. 



Numen inest, said the old Roman, 

 with proper reverence and a profound in- 

 sight inthepresence of such natural mani- 

 festations; and he who does not feel, as he. 

 that deity is present 'in gardens when 

 the eve is cool" profanes the sanctuary. 



A GARDEN is indeed a sanctuary of nat- 

 ural religion. Upon it are concentrated 

 the power and the glory and the tenderness of 

 natural forces. From above and below there 

 are focused upon it the mysterious operations 

 of sun and rain and dew, in unison with the 

 chemic, one feels like saying the alchemic, 

 properties of the soil itself. 



The man who looks after his own garden is 

 continually in the presence of the inspiring 

 strangeness, the ever new surprise and thrill of 

 the creative marvel. He takes a bulb in his 

 hand, dry and crackling and to all appear- 

 ances dead as an Egyptian mummy. Scm:- 

 where within its tiny cerements hides the spark 

 of life; though, should he unfold one layer 

 after the other, he would seek in vain for its 

 presence. So the man of science seeks for the 

 soul of man in his body, and not finding it, 

 pronounces it non-existent. Who would be- 

 lieve that this dry and dusty relic when buried 

 an inch or two in dark earth, seemingly as un- 

 vital as itself, mere inert matter to all appear- 

 ance, shall be met there in the darkness with 

 warm awakening energies, immediately taking 

 it into their care; that it and the earth alike 

 are as ready to catch fire as phosphorus itself, 

 vividly responsive one to the other; and that, 



DAFFODILS 



Gray is the city as a gray-beard Jew. 

 Steel, paper, shoes, a thousand sordid things. 

 Crowd the dull windows, fill the humming hives. 

 Busy the piteous-eager heart of men. 



Yet on a day when light the wafting wind 



Teased the grim giant with a hint of spring. 



There between btiildings broke the sunlight through, 



And lot an arched dark window was ablaze 



With the gold splendor of the daffodils! 



Who said the day of miracles was done? 

 I saw with my two eyes, and felt my heart 

 Go fluting "April!" ail the wintry day. 

 And I shall never pass that way again 

 Without remembrance of the swift surprise — 

 Here i:i the sun the jonquils' spendthrift gold; 

 At the street's end the blue, resounding sea! 



— Sara Hamilton Birchall. 



after a while, thus subterraneously nourished, 

 fed from above also by stealing rains and dews, 

 and hotly kissed through its mask of earth by 

 that mighty shining which has traveled mil- 

 lions of miles through ethereal space, to assist 

 at this miniature marvel, it shall jet up into the 

 April morning, a curiously carved cone of 

 waxen petals pouring fragrance — a hyacinth. 

 .A hyacinth — yes! But how much more to the 

 man who has watched while it thus came into 

 being. 



I sometimes wish that Adam — the first gar- 

 dener, as Hamlet's gravedigger remarked — had 

 left the creation without names; for names 

 have a curious way of robbing things of their 

 proper value, and particularly of their first 

 strangeness. Something arrests us either by 

 its beauty or its unfamiliarity, and we immedi- 

 ately ask what it is. While no one tells us, we 

 remain curious, but from the moment we hear 

 its name, its interest for us diminishes: it 

 takes its place in the category of familiar 

 things, though, of course, we know no more 

 about it than ever. So one says "a hyacinth" 

 or ''a rose" thoughtlessly, as though we knew 

 all about them, almost indeed as though we 

 could make them ourselves had we a mind to. 

 Yet the names of flowers have often, as in 

 this case of the hyacinth, an association 

 value which gives a lift to the imagina- 

 tion. It certainly adds to its magic for 

 us to recall that this is the flower that the 

 Greeks believed to have sprung from the 

 grave of Hyacinthus, the beautiful youth 

 accidentally killed by Apollo as they 

 played at quoits together. Still one can 

 read "Alas! Alas!" in Greek upon its 

 petals. So long ago the flowers we love 

 were in the world; and such associations, 

 though they are but subsidiary to the 

 natural inspiration of gardens, are poig- 

 nant remembrances of lovely half-for- 

 gotten things, romantic lives long since 

 ended, beautiful faces that once bent over 

 these very flowers, or those poets who 

 have brought them the added enchant- 

 ment of their songs. 



E'VEN though you utterly neglect your 

 garden, it will flame in a glory of 

 weeds; for, first and last, it is a mystic 

 piece of God's earth, potential with all 

 those magical energies that of their very 

 strength bring forth beauty. Every foot 

 of it conceals buried treasures of untold 

 value — gold and silver, ivory and myrrh, 

 fretted imageries, carved chalices, and a 

 hoard of fragrant things. 



