Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10 1908. THE FINE ART OF GARDENING

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4338, 19 November 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10 1908. THE FINE ART OF GARDENING

2 hit above all—to thine own self be true, ind it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

To those who serve nature on their knees, that is to say in a of profound reverence, and with “an infinite capacity of taking pains in order to win from her wonderful and beautiful secrets, the science of gardening is little less than a passion. Unless indeed it be that they have vowed allegiance to some sister science, such as the science of which concerns itself with the human body or with the life of the lower animals. The whole expanse of our modern civilisation is based upon the cultivation of the soil. Where should we be without the skill which addresses itself to the draining, tilling, and sowing of our pasture lands ? Our butter export, what would become of that? Our mutton, our cereals, our fruits and our honey, where would they be ? The corn supply of this round world, the mighty determining factor in the prosperity of nations, is nothing short of the tremendous exposition of what the God-given mind of man can bring forth from a wild, rank grain. Our lovely and royal-hued anemonies are nothing less than the fair children of a wild clan of Russian flowers, insignifigant in themselves, until man took thought to liberate the beauties which he divined to be slumbering within their scant forms, and paltry attire. Behold now to what radiance they have attained. Look at them las they were only a few weeks gone, shining in circled beauty about the rotunda in our Domain, every child of them the peculiar and delicate expression of the fostering, patient thought and skill of our own head gardener, every one of them a poem of his own making; for he himself raised the seed wherefrom they were grown. The ranunculi also, with their transparent, clear, living colour, they likewise were reared from seed of Mr Dalton’s raising. It is no pastime this art of gardening if it were anything less than a grand enthusiasm it would be a drudgery, as music or literature, or any of the fine arts would be a drudgery to one who followed them merely for a living, and not from any higher motive. The grandest oratorio ever composed was envolved from a fine combination of the harmonies hidden in the various scales. The finest poem ever written was the condensing into language of those rare i things which communicate thera- | selves to the listening heart, and hearing ear of the poet. And so it it is with gardening. No one save those who have watched tender things push up their sweet heads through the soil, which they themselves have made habitable for their garden children, no one save those who have watched these sweet things of nature and of man unfold into regal form and hue, can possibly estimate what amount ol ! thought and skill and toil, aye and worship also, must go to the equipment of a successful gardener. The history of the race has its dawn in a garden, to read of which garden with its four rivers, its abundant dews, and its happy, in-nocently-harmless wild creatures, perhaps misleads us into the impression that our first parents had nothing to do all day long but tie up the climbing roses with strains of the long grass, or chase the great goldzoned humble bees, and fluttering butterflies to their sleeping places. Nothing at all of the kind ! Adam’s intelligence demanded better employment than that be sure ; and as for Eve, she must have had something definite to do or else she would have wasted too much of his time talking. No, Adam had to tend the garden, drain it most likely, for those heavy dews must have left it pretty wet (we have to drain nowadays to moisten the soil, by means of the air ,‘which carries in the vapour, as they have to do in the difficult soil of our Domain) and Eve be sure had to watch the seed pods and save up the seed for the next sowing. If they had only given their whole attention to their profession, like sensible people, and not stopped to argue with those critics who took exception to the garden rules, why then we should all have been gardening to this day. And thereby our intellegence would have been too much developed for anyone ever to run away with the notion that all f that is required in a gardener is manual work.