A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude

by Frank Frankfort Moore

The result of his harangue was the summoning of the head-gardener before the Board and his condemnation on the ground that he had put the Beautiful in the place that should be occupied by the Educational. He was ordered to abandon that unauthorised hobby of his for gratifying the senses of foolish people who did not know the difference between Phormium Hookeri and Metroxylon Elatum, and to set to work to lay out an Educational Garden.

He looked at the members of the Board, and, like the poker player who said, “I pass,” when he heard who had dealt the cards, he made no attempt to defend himself. He laid out the Educational Garden that was required of him, and when he had done so and the Board thought that he was resigned to his fate as the interpreter of the rules of prosody as applied to a garden, he handed in his resignation, and informed them that he had accepted a situation as Curator of a park in a rival town, and at a salary—a Curator gets a salary and a gardener only wages—of exactly double the sum granted to him by the employers from whom he was separating himself.

In three years the place he left had become bankrupt and was wound up. It was bought at a scrapping figure by the Municipality, and its swings are now said to be the highest in five counties.

I saw the Educational Garden that he laid out, and knew, and so did he, that he was “laying out”—the undertaker's phrase—the whole concern. When he had completed it, I felt that I could easily resist the temptation to introduce education at the expense of design into any garden of mine.

It is undeniable that a place constructed on such a botanical system may be extremely interesting to a number of students, and especially so to druggists' apprentices; but turning to so-called “educational purposes” a piece of garden that can grow roses, is like using the silk of an embroiderer to darn the corduroys of a railway porter.

But it was a revelation to some people how the growing of war-time vegetables where only flowers had previously been grown, was not out of harmony with the design of a garden. I must confess that it was with some misgiving that I planted rows of runner beans in a long wall border which had formerly been given over to annuals, and globe artichokes where lilies did once inhabit—I even went so far as to sow carrots in lines between the echeverias of the stone-edged beds, and lettuces at the back of my fuchsia bushes. But the result from an æsthetic standpoint was so gratifying that I have not ceased to wonder why such beautiful things should be treated as were the fruit-trees, and looked on as steerage passengers are by the occupants of the fifty-guinea staterooms of a fashionable Cunarder. The artichoke is really a garden inmate; alongside the potatoes in the kitchen garden, it is like the noble Sir Pelleas who was scullery-maid in King Arthur's household. The globe artichoke is like one of those British peers whom we hear of—usually when they have just died—as serving in the forecastle of a collier tramp. It is a lordly thing, and, I have found, it makes many of the most uppish forms in the flower garden hide diminished heads. An edging of dwarf cabbages of some varieties is quite as effective as one of box, and Dell's “black beet” cannot be beaten where a foliage effect is desired. Of course the runner bean must be accepted as a flower. If it has been excluded from its rightful quarters, it is because the idea is prevalent that it cannot be grown unless in the unsightly way that finds favour in the kitchen garden. It would seem as if the controllers of this department aimed at achieving the ugly in this particular. They make a sort of gipsy tripod of boughs, only without removing the twigs, and let the plant work its way up many of these. This is not good enough for a garden where neatness is regarded as a virtue.

I found that these beans can be grown with abundant success in a border, by running a stout wire along brackets, two or three feet out from a wall, and suspending the roughest manila twine at intervals to carnation wires in the soil below. This gives an unobtrusive support to the plants, and in a fortnight the whole, of this flimsy frontage is hidden, and the blossoms are blazing splendidly. I have had rows of over a hundred feet of these beans, but not one support gave way even in the strongest wind, and the household was supplied up to the middle of November.

I am sure that such experiments add greatly to the interest of gardening; and I encourage my Olive branch in her craving after a flower garden that shall be made up wholly of weeds. She has found out, I cannot say how, that the dandelion is a thing of beauty—she discovered one in a garden that she visited, and having never seen one before, inquired what was its name. I told her that the flower was not absolutely new to me, but lest I should lead her astray as to its name, she would do well to put her inquiry to the gardener and ask him for any hints he could give her as to its culture, and above all, how to propagate it freely. If he advised cuttings and a hot bed, perhaps he might be able to tell her the right temperature, and if he thought ordinary bonemeal would do for a fertiliser for it.

Beyond a doubt a bed of dandelions would look very fine, but one cannot have everything in a garden, and I hope I may have the chance, hitherto denied to me, of resigning myself to its absence from mine, even though it be only for a single week.

But there are many worthy weeds to be found when one looks carefully for them, and I should regard with great interest any display of them in a bed ( in a neighbour's garden, providing that that garden was not within a mile of mine).