Book of Gardens 
7 
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 
W E 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 flower 
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, theless 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 
busy, 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 
fancy, 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. 
Nnmen 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. Some¬ 
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 buildings broke the sunlight through, 
And lo! 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!” all the wintry day. 
And I shall never pass that way again 
Without remembrance of the swift surprise — 
Here in 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 froni 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. 
