It strikes one from the very first how neatly most of England is kept. The dip and rise of softly swelling hills across which the curling ribbon of the road winds leisurely between neat hedges, the fields in patches, coloured brown and green, golden with Corn, scarlet with Poppies, yellow with Buttercups; the circular bunches of trees under whose shade fat cattle stand lazily switching their tails at flies; the woods, hangers, shaws and coppices, glades, dells, dingles and combes, all set out so orderly and precise that, from a hill, the country has the appearance of a patchwork quilt set in a pleasant irregularity, studded with straggling farms, and little sleepy villages where the resonant note of the church clock checks off the drowsy hours. The road that runs through this quilt land seems like a thread on which villages and market towns are strung, beads of endless variety, some huddled in a bunch upon a hill, some long and straggling, some thatched and warm, red-bricked and creeper-covered, others white with roofs of purple slate, others of grey stone, others of warm yellow. All alive with birds and flowers and village children, butterflies and trees; fed by broad rivers, or hanging over singing streams or deep in the lush grass of water meadows gay with kingcups.
This garden is for us who care to know it. We can take the road, our garden path, and pluck, as we will, flowers of all kinds from our borders; sleep in our garden on beds of bracken pulled and piled high under trees; or on soft heaps of heather heaped under sheltering stones. If we know our garden well enough it will give us food—salads, fruits and nuts; it will cure us of our ills by its herbs; feed our imagination by the quaint names of flower and herb. Here’s a small list that will sing a man to sleep, dreaming of England.
Poet’s Asphodel.
Shepherd’s Purse.
Our Lady’s Bedstraw.
Water Soldier.
Rowan.
Hound’s Tongue.
Gipsy Rose.
Fool’s Parsley.