This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on July 15, 1939.
I visited a beautiful garden one day this week, and saw beauty face to face. Everything in the garden was tidy, selected, disciplined. Not a loose leaf, not a spent blossom.
The grass on the lawns was barbered; the paths were swept; the fountain performed in rhythmic whirls; the birds sang discreetly; a squirrel looked over the fence, and disappeared on the other side. There was a bed of pansies, the largest blossoms I had ever seen — yellow, purple and blue — in the form of a Maltese cross.
We stopped to admire them and said something about their beauty.
“Do you know anything about pansies?” the lady of the garden asked me sharply, looking up from her grass cutting. “I mean,” she went on, “have you any scientific knowledge of them?”
I confessed I had not. I only knew them as early bloomers, hardy and satisfying.
“You’re well off,” she said bitterly. “We know too much around here and have too high a standard, even in pansies. We began by liking flowers and raising a few, but soon we began to find out there were better varieties, and we had to have the best. We couldn’t let them just grow — we had to start them in the greenhouse, throw away the small ones and force the others by fertilizing.
“Our sweet peas could not even show a tendril, but we clipped it off, and tied it up to the support by artificial means, so it can have all its strength for bloom, and even then a certain percentage of the bloom is picked off.
“We had nice lavender, good enough for anyone, but someone told us there was a better kind, so we threw ours away and got this, which has a bigger flower, though it does not look just right to me. We’re never satisfied, never at rest, for there is always something better ahead of us. Now we are working like mad to get the lawns cut and every dead flower off because tomorrow is Sunday and we will have visitors.”
“Why don’t you sit down and enjoy it?” I asked her. “If I had a bed of pansies like this I would never ask for more!”
“That’s what you think,” she said sadly, “but it does not work out in reality. The more you have, the more you want. My mother lived in Manitoba when I was a little girl, and we always had a bed of portulaca and one of nasturtiums and cans of balsam in the house, and geraniums, and we enjoyed them. They did not ride us. Now we would not give room to any of these — they are too easy to grow.
“This garden has really got us down — I begrudge the time I have spent talking to you, for I should be clipping the edge here — it is untidy, and tomorrow is Sunday.”
“Why don’t you hire someone to help you? It’s too much for two people to look after.”
“We cannot trust anyone,” she said. “We’ve done it all ourselves from the beginning, and that’s another pit we have fallen into. We think no one else knows how to handle these superfine, extra special plants, some of which are not found anywhere else in Canada.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you are quite right. We are like the people who moved into a new house and are so busy keeping the silver polished and the furniture dusted, they cannot enjoy it. It was not so noticeable while we were young and strong, but it is a weariness of the flesh now, and sometimes I wish someone else had it.
“It holds us like a bad habit. The grass there behind you is so sacred we do not step on it, and don’t you dare to! Do you see the sign. ‘No Children Allowed?’ That’s how far we have gone! It is not a garden any more — it is a shrine and exhibition and treadmill combined.
“I’ve had to give up my Women’s Institute and church work and the literary club — I have lost my interest in them some way, and cannot get it back. If I had done as much for them as I have for this ungrateful garden, they would not leave me desolate now. But all we have got out of this is a picture in the paper, blisters on our hands, a backache and a sense of frustration.
“But now you must go,” she said firmly. “I haven’t talked as much as this all summer.”
“Sell it,” I said. “If a garden does not give you pleasure, what is the use of it?”
“Sell it!” she repeated, drawing her head across her forehead. “This garden has cost us the best years of our lives. Who’ll pay us for that?”
When I came home that day, the untidy bloom at Lantern Lane came out to meet me like a friendly dog. I looked lovingly at a stalk of Canterbury bells in the lavender bed. It should have been removed long ago, but there it was, unabashed, in full bloom. Then I saw the cheerful faces of the clump of calandula coming out among the lilies — volunteers from last year.
Someone should do something about it, I know. I went around to the roses and cut off the worn ones with a pair of scissors, and revelled in their beauty. They need trimming, I know; they are top-heavy and shapeless, but the blooms are gorgeous and the perfume fills the air. And down from the roses are three long rows of cucumbers, planted on June 13, according to the best traditions of an old gardener who lived near us in Manitou, Man. Every year we plant them on this date, and never once have they failed.
The bird houses have each a family, and the bird baths are used every hour of every day. The cherries are ripe on the trees and we do not begrudge the birds their share. The flowers are not too good to cut and the grass is just right for children to play on.
Above it all there is a feeling of comfort, companionship and freedom — unhurried and serene.
It will never get its picture in the paper, but what of that? A garden is something to live with and work in, with pleasure. These regimented gardens look well around public buildings. Their severe and ordered beauty belongs there, and gives pleasure to the passerby.
When I am in Regina I always walk through the lovely public garden there, with its artistic grouping of flowers, its shaven lawn and radiating paths. It is a delight to the eye. Last year, I saw the public gardens at Halifax in their midsummer glory.
And I want now to see the Good Neighbor Garden on the Turtle Mountain plateau between Manitoba and North Dakota, which commemorates the 115 years of peace between Canada and our Good Neighbor.
Gardens like these are part of our national life. We are proud of them and show them to our visitors, but for living with, day by day, I prefer the easygoing, carefree rhythm which allows Canterbury bells to bloom inside a lavender bed.
