Walking up to the Garden

25 April

Just one photograph today - a weekend ‘extra’. The main post comes tomorrow.

As many readers will know, I volunteer a couple of times a week at a garden in a corner of a town park in which we grow organic vegetables and some fruit which we donate to local food banks. About four tons last summer. The town gives us the land and a grant that helps us do what must be done. Today as I was walking up from the river towards the garden I saw this, and had to record it.

Days like this remind me of Kipling’s “The Glory of the Garden” (text follows).

Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,

Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,

With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;

But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

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For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,

You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all,

The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks,

The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

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And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ’Prentice boys

Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;

For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,

The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

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And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,

And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;

But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,

For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

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Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

By singing:—“Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade,

While better men than we go out and start their working lives

At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

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There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,

There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick,

But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,

For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

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Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,

If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;

And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,

You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

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Oh, Adam was a gardener, and he who made him sees

That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,

So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray

For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!