YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 87, 21 February 1941, Page 44

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 58)

struck by this sentence: "A sculptor can always see in a piece of unmoulded clay a more _ perfect figure than he can ever hope to shape." While clay, modeller’s clay, in my hands remains merely a lump, yet very truly do I know how the fingers, cunning to fashion beauty, itch to get at the moist clay. So must the landscape gardener feel when he is handed an unplanted garden lot and is free to create living beauty as best he may, using every hill and hollow, or any natural feature to further the design. iT N a book I read recently I was Not all of us have the ability or the opportunity to plan our gardens from the start. Many of us lack the seeing eye which looks on a particular spot, possibly a mere rubbish dump, and. beholds it ablaze with a swiftly chosen bed of flowers, But a depressing hollow where storm water seeps is already to an expert eye a gracious lily pond where the sunshine lies meshed in the ‘swaying stems. One such garden I remember when I was taking stock recently. It was not large nor had it the terribly planned

look of a too carefully designed garden, yet with the art which conceals art it rieted joyously within the bounds. made long ago for the still unplanted beds. As the south side of the house was the garden entrance, I stepped on a day of excessive heat, into grateful ‘shade. In the Shade Within the shadow of the housewalls flourished all manner of shade-loving plants. A giant primula jostled smaller primulas, pansies, violas, the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. Many ferns throve on what in so many gardens is a gloomy dank spot. Along warm bricked paths, set by the capable fingers of the two ladies with garden vision, I took my way to the gay north wall where massed scarlet geraniums in the evening hour were dazzling with that intensified depth of colour peculiar to the sunset hour of a Canterbury nor’-westery day. By the porch I was interested to see a climbing arbutilon, the deep red and gold flowers looking like myriad Chinese lanterns aglow. Radiating brick paths led to all kinds of garden treasures. Roses, despite droughty conditions, were not allowed to be thirsty here. Lilies of every hue grew with roots shaded by humbler ground plants and heads to the sun. Beneath a fine old tamarisk I sat on a rustic seat and admired the massing of larkspurs and pink godetias. Space forbids ‘the telling of all the story of that garden, but I knew that it had blossomed as beautifully in the imagination long ago as it did before my eyes that summer evening. Such vision is rare indeed, and to add to that the capacity for hours of work--weary uninspiring brick laying, patient planting and unremitting care-~ well that is truly garden genius.