THE VILLAGE TEACHER.
My favourite occupation between school hours, during the Spring and Summer, is GARDENING. The munificence of some village Lorenzo has bequeathed, for the use of the schoolmaster, several acres of ground, well situated for tillage or ornamental purposes. Since I have been the incumbent, I have taken much pains to improve it by surrounding the chief part with hedges of cedar and thorn, and planting a good selection of fruit and forest trees. The lower part of the field is in grass, and a winding gravel walk leads from one group of trees to another. Here, according to their various tastes and habits, may be seen the magnolias of our own and the southern states, the walnut, the locust, the elm, the tulip tree, and the different varieties of pine, and larch, and fir, which it has been my study to arrange so as to diversify the view, and exhibit as much as my slender means would allow, the great families into which the vegetable kingdom is divided. A brook as clear as crystal babbles along through an adjoining lot, and enters mine towards the lower end. I have conducted it to a natural hollow in the ground, and have thus, at a trifling expense, formed a fish-pond, which adds greatly to the beauty of my little domain, and furnishes me not only with wholesome food for my own and my friends' tables, but is well suited, from the natural moisture of its banks, for the cultivation of many of our beautiful ferns and aquatic plants. The middle of the lot I have planted with the various fruit trees in which our climate is so rich, if, indeed, it may not challenge a competition in this respect with the world. The upper and smaller portion of the lot, I have appropriated to what is called gardening in the stricter sense of the word. In marking out the walks, I have endeavoured to follow, as nearly as I could, what the painters, perhaps a little fantastically, call the line of beauty, so as to have but few sharp corners or square beds. At the prominent angles and the centres of the beds, are planted the Rhododendron; the two Kalmias; the scarlet, the tri-coloured and the flowering Azaleas; the Clethra and the Philadelphus, mingling with the most beautiful of the domesticated foreign shrubbery—the different Roses, Honeysuckles, and Jessamines. Underneath, and among this shrubbery, are seen the blue and scarlet Lobelias, the native Lily, the Gerardia, the Arethusa, the Orchis, the Bartsia, the Epigea, and all those beautiful flowers that spring up in our woods and meadows, and so frequently bloom and die unseen or unappropriated. These native flowers make a fine show and not an unfavourable comparison even with those beauties of Europe and the East that I have been able to collect and arrange by their side.
I have been thus particular and egotistical in describing my garden, perhaps from vanity, but partly from a wish that the plan may be followed. Our native shrubbery and flowers are not surpassed in beauty and splendour by those of any region in the temperate zone, and many of them in magnificence of foliage and colours are truly tropical. They are sought for abroad with great eagerness, and form an indispensable part of every gentleman's collection. I wish it were more the custom for our farmers and cottagers to domesticate them in their gardens and around their houses.—They improve materially by cultivation, and new varieties are frequently formed. What can be a more beautiful ornament to the front of a farm-house, or a neat white-washed cottage, than a Sweet-briar, winding between the windows and over the door? or the Carolina Passion flower, the Alleghany Vine, the Clematis, or the scarlet Trumpet flower? These rural decorations add more than one would imagine, who had not tried them, to the innocent pleasures of a family; they have no small influence in forming the taste of children; they form a favourite retreat for the birds; and they fling over the whole country an air of peace, and contentment, and innocent enjoyment, which no one, who has not travelled in the more beautiful and retired parts of England, can fully appreciate.
I recollect once in riding through the valley of Chester county with some foreign gentlemen, that they were struck with the nakedness and rudeness of the farm-houses. It appeared to them the most beautiful region they had ever seen, and they exclaimed, with one voice, that the inhabitants did not seem worthy of possessing it. On the side of some sloping hill and in front of a lawn as smooth as velvet, or laden with the riches of the harvest, would be seen a barn and a house that looked as if the master and horse had changed lodgings, both of rude unhewn stone, without a single tree, or shrub, or a trailing vine, for shade or ornament. Such an insensibility to the beauties of rural decoration, in a region where every thing seems calculated to call out and quicken the taste, is unnatural, and can only arise from sordid habits or ignorance.
If these hasty remarks should call the attention of our farmers to the subject, and induce them to devote some of their leisure hours to the ornamenting of their grounds, I shall be richly rewarded; and I can promise to them also a rich reward.—Their houses will be more cool and healthful, and they will find that by encouraging in their children a taste for gardening, and for observing the native beauties of our forests, their fondness for the innocent pleasures of home and for reading will be increased, together with that unambitious ease and industry which form the distinguishing traits in the character of a virtuous peasantry.
I began this paper with a design to eulogise the art of gardening, and investigate its effects on the mind. I have been diverted, however, from my purpose, and must, in a future number, resume the disquisition.
FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.