YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 82, 17 January 1941, Page 44

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 56)

I have yielded to temptation. Before me, as I write, lie the narrow green leaves of lemon verbena out of one of your gardens; No rare lilies nor the handsomest of hollyhock delphiniums tempt me to break any of the commandments, but scented verbena, ever since I can remember, just compels me, to pause and snatch furtively. Or, if the bush flourishes well beyond the garden wall, then I fear that I covet my neighbour’s, bush. | T has happened again! Once more More than twenty years ago this passion for verbena asserted itself at a time when my mind should have been (and was) occupied. with approaching motherhood. Taking advantage of my rather special state, I insisted that a perfectly worthy and scrupulously honest companion should do the snatching for me. To this day, when I visit her, she hurries determinedly, past the fragrant bush which still flourishes in the teeth of a fresh sea breeze. So, if you grow lemon verbena where it overhangs a public roadway, deal leniently with passers-by who yearn for one tiny sprig to help them on their way. Now I’m making a new year resolution to giow verbena of my own, and to try tu resist yours when, as now, I am absent from my own garden patch. Walking to town for me is rather exciting, even if my feet, accustomed to country pastures, resent the pavements and my shin bones remind me_ that hills are hard on folks who dwell on the plains. Last year at this time I was charmed by a glorious show of soft

‘blue petunias. Along an embankment ‘facing a main thoroughfare there blaze to-day yards and yards of "rosy morn," that challengingly gay petunia. that cefies drought or deluge and just kéeps ‘on keeping on-blooming delightfully wherever it finds itself a place. Equally cheerful and hardy are the larkspurs with which to-day I have filled a lovely old pewter vase. Best of all I like the deep bright blue colour, though larkspurs to-day have many soft pastel tones and a vivid pink that goes well with the strong blues. The pewter vase is set on an oak hall settle, but the big living room is fragrant with rosesarranged in a Chinese ginger jar in deep blue with a spray of white blossom across it; stocks in various colours add their own distinctive perfume, and delightful in form, colour, and scent are sweet. peas, glorious. frilly ones set in a quaint old silver rose bowl..The bowl was lovely in. the daytime but under artificial light becomes breath-takingly ‘beautiful as each rich colour gleams against the pure white blooms. Truly the value of white flowers in garden or house. decoration is beyond. computation. For a few weeks I’m going.to enjoy your gardens; jot down in my notebook all the particularly charming or, clever garden ideas you..offer me. Other people’s. gardens, like other people’s children, seem at first a bit difficult and unfamiliar, but they’ve the charm of the unexpected too, so I hope I'll look after this one satisfactorily.. Already I’ve made quite a useful boiling jam from the raspberry patch, though I find the birds are on the job horribly eafly.