June 26, 1915 
LAND AND WATER 
OF CERTAIN GARDENS 
By J. D. SYMON 
IF the subject seem inappropriate to these days of 
strife, defence may be found in the reflection that 
it was in a garden that strife began, when a serpent 
vain of his Kultur, talked of " science over all," 
and found a listener. But the old story may rest for 
the moment — enough of its consequences elsewhere — the 
garden, even with the sword at the gate, remains true to its 
immemorial fascinations, and this year, either by some 
unwonted and compensating lavishness of summer or by 
some trick of minds disturbed, it seems doubly delightful and 
precious. Its spell is not to be denied amid the clash of 
arms. We are told that in the very trenches, our soldiers 
are making the wilderness to blossom as the rose ; and one 
recalls from the earlier days of battle a snatch of verse written 
by an officer on the Aisne, in praise of a garden he knew and 
loved by the bridge-head of Venizel. No fragment of our recent 
war-poetry rings more true, none carries with it a more 
poignant note of contrast. In time of war, laws may be 
silent, but the gardener's gentle legislation still flourishes and 
becomes vocal in the poet's song. 
Perhaps the most magical gardens of all are those we 
shall never enter. The known enclosures are sweet enough, 
but they always fall just one degree short of the unknown. 
The variety, if not the fragrance of the known can be exhausted, 
the unknown are inexhaustible, perennial in their wonder and 
surprise. They need not be great and stately, ihe walled 
sanctuaries of noble houses, it is enough that they be of some 
age and somewhat retired. London is lich in these retreats, 
even in her districts accounted less favoured. As the train 
whirls you through unpromising suburbs, there are continual 
glimpses, at the most unHkely corners, of well-tended little 
oases. A gap between unlovely lines of brick will suddenly 
reveal a cloud of bloom, as thrilling as Wordsworth's sudden 
vision of the daffodils, but far less enduring. For in a moment 
it is gone, a memory only. Next time you pass, the distin- 
guishing flower, cherry, or plum or May, wiU have fallen ; 
you cannot recognise your garden any more. Next year 
perhaps, with luck, you may find the place again, if you are 
not reading your paper. For that garden's sake, it were well 
to absent thee from publicity awhile. 
Others less hopelessly inaccessible, are inaccessible all the 
same. Although one may come very near them, year in and 
year out, they hover always on the verge of the unknown, 
or rather the imperfectly known. Such are those of a littie 
country town, stiU unspoiled in its quaint irregularity. 
It is the very irregularity of its plan (or lack of plan), that 
makes its gardens so happily mysterious. To one who has 
not a single acquaintance there, they must remain perpetual 
mysteries. That is, mysteries in the sum of their charm. 
They reveal themselves in part at odd corners, they push 
some of their clustering beauties over the edge of mellow- 
toned old walls, their ancient trees break the red line of 
gabled roofs with fine masses of contrast, especially at sunset, 
when the greens are olive-deep and the reds a tawny gold ; 
but still the paradise withholds itself. Try what coigns of 
vantage you will, climb this little height or that, for the town 
leans against a hill-side, and try for a better view, the 
gardens keep their secret. You can only guess their 
perfection, but you know it is there ; for generations, 
ay, centuries sometimes, have gone to its making. 
Your new garden is hardly worth the name, except 
for what it holds of promise. That the gardener may 
never enjoy, but to-day he toils with better heart, for his work 
has become a symbol of the times. It is the hour when men 
have learned to sow gladly for others to reap. And on the 
scarred soil of Flanders they drive their trenches and water 
them with blood that the tree of Liberty may come to new 
strength and beauty. That, in effect, is the burden of 
" La Brabangonne." But let us cry the reader's mercy for 
this digression. Truce, it would seem, is impossible, even 
with the gentlest of themes. It is part of the bargain of 
these papers that they keep the echoes of war remote, and we 
are conscious of lamentable failure hitherto. Yet the essay, 
although it be only, as here, ah essay of sorts, is permitted to 
digress down any alley that offers, and the best of gardens 
are those where the walks and alleys take the least expected 
twists and turns. Thereby, with good patience, the wanderer 
may gain some new glimpses, no matter if they be, as a wicked 
wit said of Jowett's philosophy, " glimpses into the obvious." 
Whereby, it would seem, we have regained at length the 
thread of our discourse. 
For the next division of the subject, now deviously reached, 
was to have been the praise of another pleasant trick of un- 
known gardens. Such are , hose that he c ose to the high- 
\vay, but are jealously screened from the highwayman's 
sight by high walls. Yet they are not quite obdura'.e in their 
reserve, for they concede a single point to the inquisitive. 
Therein they are happily distinguished from their fellows 
who add to the blankness of their guardian wall the added 
blankness of a closely boarded door, that last touch of the 
inhospitable. But the kind I have in mind are kindlier and 
great i their merit, for they permit some little glimpses of 
their treasure through a fair and graceful gate of old wrought 
iron. Much they may not give, but their little is a thing of 
price. The path is, at the best, narrow and of irregular paving 
stones, or, almost as good, of smooth brick, worn, it may be, 
into occasional hollows by feet of many generations. If the 
gate be a postern, and not an entrance of greater or less 
ceremony, such a path may even be of velvet turf, the most 
pleasing of all paths to eye and foot, although the gardener 
mislikes it and will tell you it is the breeding-place of slugs. 
But the brick or paved app oach lends perhaps a 
finer accent to the skirting flowers. It goes best with lines of 
standard roses, backed by a high hedge of sweet peas on either 
hand. And it is of the essence of such vistas that they be 
self-contained. To right or left they should not give away 
the further secrets of the ground, but lead the eye right 
onwards to an indefinite end, or if definite, let it be but a 
suggestion of the house which is the heart of the sanctuary. 
That is good, but better still if the path ends in a 
maze of flower and foliage, the shimmering intricacies of the 
pergola, where the rambler twines luxuriant. Or the path 
may widen for an instant, before it loses itself into a little 
circular space centring on a lichened sundial. You can never 
go close enough, stranger that you are, to read the warning 
motto on that silent chronicler, but you may before you pass 
on try to imagine it, or if you are in the mood invent one for 
yourself. Try as you will you will never better that suggested 
by D'Annunzio for a friend's sundial. Me lumen, vos umbra 
regit. 
Putting aside the tempting morality of that epigram, 
which is its own best exposition, let us by way of relief turn 
from the ordered sweetness of formal gardens to another 
kind, equally pleasant in its way, but charming also in its 
admired disorder, the garden of childhood. Stevenson 
understood it well, when with deft implication he called his 
most delicious medley of lyrics " A Child's Garden of Verses." 
The child's garden is the medley in excelsis. No matter how 
the little gardener toils, the result is always haphazard, here 
a tuft of London Pride, there of pansies, and always the 
pathetic failure of the attempt to trace a name in marjoram 
or cress. The story books of another day had a beautiful 
fable that told how on George's birthday, punctual to the 
hour, George's name grew up clear and legible in his garden. 
How many vanished springs saw small imitators of 
George looking in vain for the perfect lettering of the picture ! 
But the experiment was always tried, the eternal hopefulness 
of youth refused to be discouraged. If not this year then 
next. And sometimes a few letters and parts of letters 
rewarded faith and patience. In the chUd's garden, little 
girls succeed best. The boy's garden is usually a joke. One 
recalls how that joke appeared in its most amiable form at a 
certain preparatory school, where prizes were given for the 
finest efforts. One or two plots were, by rather more than 
courtesy, gardens recognisable. But a passion for meretricious 
ornament undid the rest. Stones of every sort, even the 
roughest stones of the field, bits of broken bottles and shells 
were introduced by way of decoration, and the result resembled 
nothing so much as Zulu graves. And in one case, assiduous 
digging left little or no space for horticulture. That garden 
was like an abandoned field-work, torn by high-explosive 
shells, and so it remained when the judges came round. 
Yet to give the human boy his due, ingenuity sometimes 
finds its account even here in unexpected ways. Once 
upon a time, a handy youth, fascinated by the Japanese 
garden at the White City, set about reproducing it in miniature. 
The scheme succeeded, and the arrangement of the ornamental 
waters did credit to a budding engineer, and showed a bent 
that might one day guide the choice of a profession. But 
in his garden the child sees far more than the blind grown up. 
It is a microcosm. His scale is not the scale of his elders. 
Here Stevenson has his word again, not of child's gardens 
made with hands but of natural landscape in miniature. 
" The very tiny dell " he found " beside a shining water well," 
was in itself a world. It became, was, actual and in relief, 
a little picture ; in the original sense, an idyll. 
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