March, 1919 
19 
ON LOOKING UP FROM A GARDEN 
A Discourse That Attempts to Show That Gardens Are Even More 
Than Brown Earth and Blossoms 
RICHARDSON WRIGHT 
E very year just about this time some 
poet or essayist or other writer-person 
delivers himself of an ecstasy on Spring— 
Spring as a sort of glorified fairy in diapha¬ 
nous wraps who comes tip-toeing down the 
land to touch the flowers and trees and make 
them leap into blossom. 
Very pretty picture! 
But the gardener, who really knows and 
loves flowers and trees and all the green, grow¬ 
ing things, has quite a different conception of 
spring. Nothing diaphanous, nothing fairy¬ 
like; in fact, to him spring isn’t a person at 
all, it is a movement—a mighty urging up¬ 
ward. It isn’t coaxed from above, but moved 
from below. The growing things break up¬ 
ward through the crust of chill earth the way 
a man gets out of bed on a cold morning—- 
gradually, reluctantly, cover by cover, a toe 
at a time, not because someone has waked him, 
but because he has accumulated the necessary 
refreshment of sleep and is ready to go forth 
and do the day’s work. Having stored energy 
through a winter’s 
sleep, the growing 
things rise up to go 
about their work. And 
they urge upward and 
outward until that 
work is finished, when 
winter brings them rest 
again. 
Until a man appre¬ 
ciates this upward urge 
he can never gather the 
full fruit of enjoyment 
that a garden yields. 
For a garden is not 
merely a place to look 
at; it is a place to look 
from. And the way to 
look from a garden is 
to look up. More—a 
garden is not alone a 
place to work in; it is 
a place to work from. 
And the way to work 
from a garden is to 
work up. 
These are hard say¬ 
ings, so we shall ex¬ 
plain them. 
T here is magic 
about soil that is 
cleansing. The mere 
dust of loam on the 
hands, the very breath¬ 
ing of its aroma seems 
to clear away the false 
s^alues of life we ac¬ 
quire in the everyday business of living. Per¬ 
haps this is because the earth is so much a 
part of us and we of it—we come from the 
earth and to the earth we eventually return. 
Touching it is like going back to the little old 
home where life is simple and kindly. It 
cleanses us of our popin-jay egotism, rids us 
of futile materialism, acts as a sort of spiritual 
cathartic. 
It is ludicrous to be cynical in the presence 
of a lusty oak breaking into leaf. It is futile 
to be decadent with loam on your hands. And 
imagine pretending to be fashionable or ele¬ 
gant or superbly intellectual or absurdly radi¬ 
cal as you guide a plow! These things simply 
won’t work. They don’t belong. The realm 
of Nature is a different world, where such 
affairs are of no consequence. Therefore, if 
you would understand Nature, you must learn 
her tongue, and before you learn it you must 
clear away your false notions, forget the jargon 
of cities and books and ballrooms. 
It is a commonplace that men who live daily 
with Nature—farmers and sailors and such— 
have a quaint way of speaking. They use 
fantastically simple images and are gifted with 
a native brand of poetry that sounds like some 
passages of the Bible read. There is a rhythm 
to their tongue that other men simply can’t 
acquire. 
Nature has a rhythm all her own, a rhythm 
so entirely different from the concatenation of 
cities that a man has to be purged of his pride 
before he can understand it. He has to ac¬ 
knowledge that there is another world besides 
the little circle in which he moves and has his 
being. Once he acknowledges this he is given 
a glimpse of that world and hears the echo of 
its songs. It is this echo that makes the speech 
of farmers so strange. 
In the eternal dominion of Nature there is a 
great movement constantly circling upward, as 
the lark circles upward, and those who come 
close to her are swept along with it. A man 
soon learns this when he starts working in a 
garden. He can’t resist its cleansing. He 
can’t resist the tug of 
its other-worldly urg¬ 
ing and the up-rushing 
of its hidden energy 
from the deep silences 
of the earth. Conse¬ 
quently, the longer he 
works in that garden, 
the more is he com¬ 
pelled to work the way 
Nature work s—up¬ 
ward. 
OW there are 
many fair things 
to look upon in this old 
world—the smile that 
greets your home-com¬ 
ing of nights, the mist 
wraiths about tall 
buildings in the dusk, 
the pure colors of a 
medieval lacquer—and 
of these one very fair 
is a garden. In the 
springtime there is the 
strangely fragile lush 
grass and the golden 
loveliness of mornings 
§3 that make you feel as 
! though you are in at 
(pf the beginning of a new 
' world. In summer come 
the siesta hourc when 
heat vapors float over 
the earth like levita¬ 
tion, and the poppy 
bows her head in the 
