Volume XIX 
April. 1911 
Number 4 
What My Garden Means to Me 
by Hanna Ri0 n 
AUTHOR OF “THE GARDEN IN THE WILDERNESS,” “THE GARDEN OF MANY LITTLE PATHS,” ETC. 
T HE greatest gift of a 
garden is the restora¬ 
tion of the five senses. Dur¬ 
ing the first year in the coun¬ 
try I noticed but few birds, 
the second year I saw a few 
more, but by the fourth year 
the air, the tree-tops, the 
thickets and ground seemed 
teeming with bird life. Where 
did they all suddenly come 
from? I asked myself. The 
birds had always been there, 
but I hadn't the power to see ; 
I had been made purblind by 
the city, and only gradually 
regained my power of sight. 
My ears, deafened by the 
ceaseless whirr and din of 
commerce, had lost the keen¬ 
ness which catches the nu¬ 
ances of bird melody, and it 
was long before I was cog¬ 
nizant of distinguishing the 
varying tones that afterward 
meant joy, sorrow, loss or 
love to me. That hearing 
eventually has become so 
keen, there is no bond of 
sleep so strong that the note 
of a strange bird will not 
pierce to the unsleeping sub¬ 
conscious ear and arouse me 
instantly to alertness in every 
fibre of being. I wonder now 
if even death will make me 
insensate to the first chirp of 
a vanguard robin in March. 
During that half-awake 
first year of country life I 
was walking with a nature- 
wise man. and as we passed by a field where the cut hay lay wilt¬ 
ing, he whiffed and said, “There’s a good deal of rag-weed in that 
hay.’’ I gazed on him with the admiration I’ve saved all my life 
for wizards, and wondered what peculiar brand of nose he had. 
Then the heart, the poor jaded heart, that must etherize itself 
to endure the grimness of city life at all, how subtly it begins 
throbbing again in unison 
with the great Symphony of 
the Natural. The awakened 
heart can sense spring in the 
air when there is no visible 
suggestion in calendar or 
frosted earth, and knowing 
the songful secret, the heart 
can cause the feet to dance 
through a day that would 
only mean winter to an ur¬ 
banite. 
I he sense of taste can only 
be restored by a constant 
diet of unwilted vegetables 
and freshly picked fruit. 
The delicacy of touch 
comes back gradually by 
tending injured birdlings, 
the handling of fragile in¬ 
fant plants, and the ac¬ 
quaintance with different leaf 
textures which finally makes 
one able to distinguish, even 
in the dark, a plant by its 
Irish tweed, silken or fur 
finish. 
And the foot, how intan¬ 
gibly it becomes sensitized; 
how instinctively it avoids a 
plant even when the eye is 
busy elsewhere. On the 
darkest night I can traverse 
the rocky ravine, the thickets, 
the sinuous paths through 
overgrown patches and never 
stumble, scratch myself or 
crush a leaf. My foot knows 
every unevenness of each in¬ 
dividual bit of garden, and 
adjusts itself lovingly with¬ 
out conscious thought of brain or even use of eyes. 
To the ears that have learned to catch the first tentative lute of 
a marsh frog in spring, orchestras are no longer necessary. To 
the eyes that have regained their sight more wonder lies in the 
craftsmanship of a tiny leaf-form of inconsequential weed than is 
to be found in a bombastic arras. To the resuscitated nose is 
Garden-making is creative work, just as much as painting or writing a 
poem. It is a personal expression of self, an individual conception 
of beauty” 
(237) 
