GARDENING AT THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2540, 14 August 1915, Page 11

GARDENING AT THE FRONT

THE SOLDIERS' PASTIME. It is dayreak. A lark already on tlio wing is in full song aaid soaring high overhead, regardless of a biplano that is reconnoitring along the battlo front. A party of khaki-clad soldiers emerge from their dug-out and proceed to stretch their arms and legs. Two of the party set to work and make a charcoal lire in a brazier, on wliich they boil water to make tea and frizzle tlio bacon. Two others make off with pails and biscuit tins to bale out water from a largo hole made by a shell, and known to all of us as the "Jack Johnson" hole. They return with their vessels, from which tlio water is leaking very freely, and proceed to water tho garden. Yes, strange as it may sound, there really are gardens, and very pretty ones, tod, around the dug-outs and within a mile of the first line of firing trenches. I Let me make it clear, however, that it is only in certain parts of tlio immense battle front where gardens aro to be smn. Not, for instance, in that one-time beautiful city of Ypres and its quaint .villages surrounding. _ The whole district is a scene of desolation, a desert, where trees are uprooted by shell fire and grass refuses to grow in an atmosphere poisoned by vile gasos. Not a building has escaped destruction either by firo or by shell. Not an inhabitant left. • AH have fled, leaving only a few scared and half-starved cats still clinging to their ruined haunts. And yet this time last year there were _ many beautiful old Flemish gardens in this neighbourhood. But let ua return to the gardens of the dug-outs in tho comparatively quiet part of the line, away from the main roads, where only occasional shells and stray rifle bulletß are heard., The gardens ara of quite formal design. A system of carpet bedding seems to meet with goneral favour, whoro tho regimental arms .are worked out in flints, clinkers, or red brick upon a bank of verdant green. Tho beautiful green turf is one of tho features of these gardens, while the beds are filled with such wild flowers as cowslips, primroses, lesser celandine, lords and ladies ol' cuckoo pint, tho white-flowered Sfixifraga granulata, meadow sweet, and cardamine or Cuckoo flower. The plants are lifted from the woods, ditches, and pastures near by and duly planted in the flower beds. There they are puddled in water, so that, although taken up when !in full leaf, and very often when in flower, the plants usually recover from tlio disturbance and grow away quite well. The plants are always dug up with a spade, with plenty of, soil attached to the roots. Wild roses aro culled from the hedgerows and trained around rustic fences and gateways, while the garden paths, made of clinkers, are "usually edged with flints or red bricks. Each dug-out receives a naine, and we see them labelled Muggins' Retreat, Lovers' Bower, Plum and Apple, and so forth, while others aro blessed with such names as Regent Street, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus. Some of the gardens ero long r will bo gay with annual flowers. Shirley poppies, canary, creeper, nasturtiums, candytuft, and many other easily-grown annuals have been freely sown. Verily the Britisher is a born gardener. Onr soldiers are cheerful, and like to have an ocucpation in- spare moments, but thoy are soldiers first. and gardeners afterwards. . —Rifleman H. 0., in "The Queen.-