THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND 



a pleasant irregularity, studded with straggling farms, 

 and little sleepy villages where the resonant note of the 

 church clock checks off the drowsy hours. The road 

 that runs through this quilt land seems like a thread 

 on which villages and market towns are strung, beads 

 of endless variety, some huddled in a bunch upon a hill, 

 some long and straggling, some thatched and warm, 

 red-bricked and creeper-covered, others white with roofs 

 of purple slate, others of grey stone, others of warm 

 yellow. All alive with birds and flowers and village 

 children, butterflies and trees ; fed by broad rivers, 

 or hanging over singing streams or deep in the lush grass 

 of water meadows gay with kingcups. 



This garden is for us who care to know it. We can 

 take the road, our garden path, and pluck, as we will, 

 flowers of all kinds from our borders ; sleep in our garden 

 on beds of bracken pulled and piled high under trees ; 

 or on soft heaps of heather heaped under sheltering 

 stones. If we know our garden well enough it will give 

 us food — salads, fruits and nuts ; it will cure us of our 

 ills by its herbs ; feed our imagination by the quaint 

 names of flower and herb. Here's a small list that will 

 sing a man to sleep, dreaming of England. 



Poet's Asphodel. Celandine. 



Shepherd's Purse. Columbine. 



Our Lady's Bedstraw. Adder's Tongue 



Water Soldier. Speedwell. 



Rowan. Thorn Apple. 



Hound's Tongue. Virgin Bower. 



Gipsy Rose. Whin. 

 Fool's Parsley. 



These alone of hundreds give a lift to the day : there's 

 a story to each of them. 



Take our England as a garden and let the eye roam 

 over the laud. Here's the flat country of the Fens, 



U 



