YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 24, 8 December 1939, Page 41

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 12)

foxglove is spilt lavishly down a well remembered hillside. Great purple-crimson splashes trickle into paler pools of pink on tussocked ridge and rocky faces. White bells, mere beaded bubbles on the noontide vintage, in the moonlight glisten with the sheen of fine damask. At the brink of a disused quarry within this reft-torn chasm are masses of broom, golden yellow or white like drifts of snow; and riots of burnished gorse and convolvulus and a sprawl of bramble, hiding the man-made scars, form the loveliest of large-scale rock gardens. Truly, as F. G. Heath says, " Nature is always willing and constantly waiting to fashion things of . wondrous beauty. Only make habitable conditions for her children and they will come in troops, unbidden but never unwelcome to those who really love them." ] KNOW that to-day the wine of the In my home garden, I have planted a row of these tall graceful children of the wild, and they are still delightful with their delicately spotted throats, and handsome green leaf whorls. No generously seeded flower stalks must be allowed to remain, for then indeed I might be forced to admit that ‘even beauty may become a noxious weed. Often from the woodland garden I bring a self-sown gift for the flower beds. Not a few of my gay Oriental poppies began life in a tangle of cocksfoot and perennial rye. An arching solomon’s seal flourished exceedingly on the verge of the swamp, while quite the largest and choicest of this season’s polyanthus primroses was a

seedling chance sown where lawn and woodland meet. Nevertheless, Nature’s gifts can be an embarrassment of riches. I have, very reluctantly, ordered the removal of a most handsome water hemlock from the midst of the hydrangea bed. Last year’s child of the flood, the usurper flourished and was carefully tended. I imagined myself the possessor of some rare exotic specimen whose flowering was eagerly awaited. A large flat head of insignificant white flowers-rather like a giant parsley run to seed, led me to the name of this sinister stranger. As compensation, I have now sown a fresh row of parsley in the kitchen garden -a much happier place since the warm rains of a week ago. Being ever eager to see the result of each planting, I took care to pour boiling water gently over the tiny seeds in their shallow trench before covering them with the fine sandy soil. This drastic treatment certainly livens up the seeds and sets them germinating merrily. I am glad to see that golden ball turnips, recently thinned, are making good use of their new elbow room-so also are the carrots. parsnips and spring onions. With the soil warm and invitingly moist I have had very successful transplantings of lettuce and onion thinnings, while from two rows of poorly germinated peas I have now one quite creditable line, the new arrivals showing no resentment at being shifted to give house room to a sowing of butter beans.