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THE POOR MAN’S GARDEN.
FROM SOCIAL NOTES, LONDON, ENGLAND.
Among the chief of the many improvements which this our dingy metropolis has received within the last few years, must be classed the attention given to flowers and window gardens. The very rich have their conservatories and plantations, the well-to-do in London their greenhouse and their parterre, the humbler lovers of all green things their fern-case and flower-stands; but the dwellers in the one back room, the weary city clerk with his limited salary, his many mouths to feed, and his circumscribed house-room, have only their window garden—their long wooden box, enriched it may be with gaudy tiles—wherein to plant their childhood’s favorites and keep the color of God’s carpet green in their memories.
Flowers and music make the poetry of life, and the more the toilers in this city of brick and mortar are made familiar with them, the better for their mental and moral health. This conviction has spread rapidly during the last few years, the rich having set the example by festooning their town houses with hardy climbers, while their balconies are filled in Summer with flowers.
The subtle influence of flowers on mankind is so thoroughly admitted, that it seems as though the remembrance of the ‘garden the Lord planted’ has never died out of the perception of the human race; the love and cultivation of plants has always had an elevating tendency—a drawing near to those far-off days of innocence when the trees and flowers and song of the wild bird were man’s delight, as he ‘walked with God.’
The Dean of Westminster, other dignitaries of the Church, highborn ladies, and people of wealth and leisure, have done much lately towards fostering this growing feeling among all classes by giving prizes for the best plants grown in dingy back yards and smoky garret-rooms; and it is as astonishing as it is touching to find how, like a human being, the little plant adapts itself to its surroundings, and throws out its beauty and fragrance in return for a little patience and tender care.
Annual exhibitions of workmen’s flowers take place patronised by the highest in the land; in all directions efforts are being made to spread the growing taste, and, above all, to give the toiling man and woman a home interest, a something to tend and watch, which is nature’s only safeguard against selfishness.
Few who have visited the sick, whether poor or otherwise, have not seen the flush of pleasure that tints their pale cheeks at an offering of flowers.
After those plant shows, where children exhibit, if the little window gardeners were encouraged to give their prize blossoms to the old and sick of their acquaintance, a feeling of kindliness and generosity in the young would be sown that would bear the fruits of charity hereafter.