Bucolic Beatitudes

by MacGregor Jenkins

I feel like saying to them: “Dear sir, or madam, what is—what can be your idea of a garden? Is it a laboratory? Is it a workshop? Is it a public house? Do you not know that a becoming reticence is Nature’s greatest charm? She does not want you prying about with your little shovel; she knows what she is doing. Your relation with your garden is quite different from that with your iceman. It is wise to know as much as you can about your iceman, but do leave your garden in peace. Beside, you are in a fair way to lose all that is best in having a garden, if you have not done so already.”

I feel toward a garden a good deal as I do toward a beautiful woman: I do not want to know how she gets her effects.

My feeling about garden work is quite different from my feeling about any other work I do on my small place. I love to slave in a stable or henhouse, for there must be no secrets in either, but I find that great discretion must be used in my work in my garden.

It is only fair to say that, anatomically, I am singularly unfitted for much of the work required. It is a long way to the ground, and to work doubled over, with my head between my knees, I find both tedious and unprofitable. But quite apart from this there are many cogent reasons for my dislike of this kind of work. I know people who delight in visiting a hotel kitchen, that they may see their feast in preparation. I regard this as little short of sacrilege. A perfect meal is a work of art, and why they should want to witness the sordid details of its preparation is a wonder to me. So it is, or should be, with a garden. The perfect product should be accepted in its perfection, without too much inquiry into or participation in its early stages.

So I delegate as much of this work as I can to hands more competent than mine, contenting myself with tentative suggestion and occasional oversight. The man-made and man-arranged part of a garden interests me but little; it is when Nature takes command, and, left to herself, begins to work her miracles that the beauty and the mystery of the garden call me to wonder and to worship.

Certain chosen tasks are my delight. An entirely unsystematic and listless weeding is one of them, though I confess that the uprooting of any growing thing always brings a pang of doubt to my mind. Often have I nurtured some alien plant and allowed it to flourish because I could not bring myself to tear it up, and passed anxious days lest it be discovered by those in authority. I like to take under my charge those plants that do not flourish, for I know it is man’s stupidity that makes them backward—some defect in their environment or arrangement. I try to solve the riddle, and sometimes I succeed. Some corner, some spot ill favored by sun or soil, fails to provide a living for anything put there; what delight to learn the secret, correct the error, and produce strong growth and hardy blossoms!

But my chief delight is to sally forth with shears, twine, and a sheaf of slender green sticks, and search out friends in need of succor.

To such as these I explain my errand. Even in my little garden, so “informal” as to be almost slovenly, I know that many cruelties are done: plants of varying and hostile habit thrown together, all living, like myself, under unnatural and often abhorred conditions, trying with all the strength that is in them to escape, to assert themselves, to be as Nature meant them to be. These I try to restrain gently and to correct their wayward tendencies. Often I find some plant that for countless generations has known but one habit of growth. Suddenly confronted by abnormal conditions and unfamiliar restraints, it throws tradition to the winds and develops new and strange habits, changes its appearance, and becomes a wanton thing. Such as these I try to restore—with many misgivings—to a more conventional manner of life.

There are those who, like children, are outgrowing their strength, and so I place the needed support and gently tie them to it, explaining, as to children, that it is but for a time, that the bonds are soft, and that as soon as the fibre toughens in their little minds and bodies it will be removed.

Then the cutting and pruning—there is sheer delight. Is it a spark of some old savage forbear that has given man his desire to kill, or is it merely man’s inherent vanity? I stand before the tiny bush, with flashing steel in hand. The cave man growls; his fingers itch to cut, to slash, to sever. The coxcomb struts and simpers; he wants the plant to bow before him or be slain; he wishes it to feel that only by the grace of this most graceless creature may it live. I know not which it be, perhaps a bit of both. Cut I do, but always with restraint, without the cruel pleasure of the brute; and in humility I strive to check my vanity of being by some mystery lord of this domain.