GOD’S ACRE IN FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 75, 21 December 1921, Page 5

GOD’S ACRE IN FRANCE

Of the 2000 British people working in France for the Imperial War Graves Commission, 1200 are gardeners, who will have over 3000 cemeteries under their charge (writes Sir William Beach Thomas in the "Daily Mail”).

At present they are chiefly busy with what may be called architectural gar-dening-levelling and digging beds and preparing a seed-bed for grass. An artist is associated with the architects proper in the capacity of a sort of liason official between the builders in stone or brick and the planters of trees and roses and mallows.

But gardening proper proceeds in the few finished cemeteries, and many most charming nurseries hare come infyi being. For example, - at the headquarters juSt outside St. Omer —close to where General French had his headquarters in 1915, nnd General Haig his in 1917 —the Army huts are encompassed with a nursery garden, now a blaze of colour with the best varieties of Michaelmas daisies, every plant nfore gorgeous yet with Peacock and Red Admiral butterflies. A good many roods are covered with budded briars. It has been very wisely decided that perhaps the best of all flowers for the purpose is tho polyanthus rose, of which many fine varieties—Orleans - , perhaps, best of-all—have been recently produced. They flower into November, are hardy, and are dwarf.

Yet the most popular plant in a "God’s Acre" is tho tree, and without suggestion, merely by native impulse, trees ore being sent from every part of tho British Empire, and, indeed, from elsewhere.

The West Indians are sending several sorts. Tho Canadians have a special nursery of red maples. Already' on Pnsschendaelo the Australian gum tree is flourishing. The South Africans, who ere nt a loss to name a characteristic native free, nre contributing oaks from the Cano.

The Newfoundlanders. wlio have purchased some nc.res outside Beaumont Tlamel—where thev suffered the heaviest casualties ever suffered by any regiment tn the war —will plant spruce nnd hemlock. May I suggest that they try to crow also of the low berried bushes which make their country supreme in autumn colouration? _Th>' Chinese, who have a large cemetery in the south, have already dispatched maidenhair trees. Since the cemeteries are built for all time —they are given in perpetuity by the Vrenc.li and Belgian Governments — a permanent force of gardeners must remain in Prance tn keen them lovely. So far. the Somme battlefield is nearly honseles a . Pricourt, Boisolle. Serre. nnd Montauban are no more; nnd oven should they bo restored it will still probably be best, that the gardeners co about their work ns now in gipsy fashion with their tent and self-contained omnibus Under their care little spaces of the desert already "blossom as the rose.”