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What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfilment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
Gertrude Jekyll, ‘On Gardening’
I admit that I have been waiting all month to post this piece, one of a series I have written on ‘God in our gardens’. Today is the last day of June and finally the sun is shining. Intermittently. We are no longer in ‘young summer’, perfect or otherwise, but the roses are at last out. It would be monstruous to complain about the weather when our gardens are singing their hearts out to give us pleasure and proclaim the gl0ry of God. If you are an atheist, you are welcome to feel that they are proclaiming the glory of Nature, or themselves, or whatever, but the collect for tomorrow, the fourth Sunday after Trinity, includes:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide
we may so pass through things temporal
that we lose not our hold on things eternal;
The sweetness of an English June would not be complete without our awareness that ‘this too will pass’ and we are reminded us that we really are nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth – clichés are so often true, aren’t they – and the word ‘garden’ derives from the Persian word for paradise, so this is not a new idea. Cardinal Newman clarified:
By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.
And a 20th century Thomas Moore included gardens in religion and art:
For most people, a garden’s foremost purpose is to give us pleasure:
Admittedly, the pleasure has to be set against occasional disappointments and setbacks. In the first place, as Ogden Nash ruefully acknowledged:
My garden will never make me famous: I’m a horticultural ignoramus.
The best approach is to take it all philosophically, like May Sarton:
For once George Bernard Shaw was uncontroversial when he said:
And Frankfort Moore added:
Do you know the –only slightly tongue-in-cheek– Gardener’s Prayer?
Say from about midnight until three o’clock in the morning,
But, You see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in.
Grant that at the same time it would not rain on
Campion, alyssum, lavender, and others which
You in Your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants
(I will write their names on a bit of paper if you like).
And grant that the sun may shine the whole day long,
But not everywhere (not, for instance, on the
Gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron) and not too much;
That there may be plenty of dew and little wind,
Enough worms, no lice or snails, nor mildew,
And that once a week thin liquid manure may fall from heaven. Amen.
There has long been a debate over whether a garden is to be appreciated on aesthetic grounds as a work of art – Gertrude Jekyll described herself as painting living pictures and controlled very carefully the components of her gardens– or whether English gardens, in particular, are beautiful because they look like Nature, according to Immanuel Kant.
Of course, cottage gardens or so-called wild gardens are usually edited a great deal more than their owners admit: the most successful are only imitations of a wilderness. But whichever category of gardener you fall into:
A garden really lives only insofar as it is an expression of faith, the embodiment of a hope and a song of praise. Russell Page, ‘The Education of a Gardener‘.
And hard work is always needed, as Lou Erickson pointed out:
With any luck, though, the perspiration will lead to inspiration. As Kenneth Druse said:
And John Erskine claimed:
But perhaps the key requirement is hope for the future:
There is of course a cycle of gardening. At its winter nadir we can still dream, with Helen Hayes:
And at its midsummer zenith, we can rejoice with Andrew Marvell:
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Kipling well understood that, as Lawrence Dossey said: the garden is a metaphor for life, and gardening is a symbol of the spiritual path:
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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