‘Our England is a garden’

Steffie Shields shares some memorable garden-related verses to suit the season.

A recent Channel 4 television documentary proved a most compelling treat. Memories of a 1962 school trip came flooding back, when I was lucky to witness a rising talent, Judi Dench perform as Anya in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Here she was performing, aged 89, decades since last treading the Old Vic stage in London, her eyes alight with glowing charm, faultlessly recalling every word of Shakespeare’s ode, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

Her one man-audience, Jay Blades of TV’s The Repair Shop fame, struggles with dyslexia. A long-term sufferer, he only learned to read at the age of 51. He was so inspired by the ‘Queen of Shakespeare’ that he summoned the courage to recite Hamlet’s famous speech, another poignant moment.

Besides her passion for the Bard, Judi is a lover of gardens, and has planted many, many trees in memory of her late husband Michael Williams and all her departed family and closest friends.

Love for others and fondness for poetry and gardens often seem to go hand in hand. Some have both the need and the flair to express their fervour for nature in words that the rest of us wish we could summon.

Changing seasons
Come October, and summer long gone, writers are often frequented by the muse. Changing temperatures affect moods almost as much as colours of foliage.

‘Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter…’
Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act 4 sc. 4

The intensity of morning light this month plays on warm autumnal hues of foliage bringing brief, often breathtaking, scenes that affect emotions. Those with a keen awareness of fleeting time and season, and a gift for words, wax lyrical as soon as leaves start to fall.

Most gardeners I know appear rather more down to earth realists, their practical skills sometimes balanced with a wry sense of humour. Readers might relate to this amusing anonymous verse found on a plaque in a Swaton garden, playfully re-wording Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem, ‘The Glory of the Garden’.

‘Our England is a garden,
And such gardens are not made
By singing ‘Oh how beautiful’
And sitting in the shade.
And when your back stops aching
And your hand begins to harden
You will find yourself a partner
In the Glory of the Garden.’

My father would have loved this take. All through his life he penned poems to cover all manner of occasions, but insisted on calling them verse or ‘random rhymes’.

As I grew up, he often amused me by challenging me with word games, pointing out puns, or reading his favourite poems out loud.

‘The Road Not Taken’ by the acclaimed American observer of rural life Robert Frost (1874-1963) comes frequently to mind to this day.

Should you Google the words ‘October and poem’ online, Frost features amongst a tally of 33 poets whose works include odes to this calendar month. Little wonder, Thursday 3rd October has been chosen as National Poetry Day with this year’s theme of ‘counting’!

Lately, a surprisingly enjoyable task, cleaning out my study, long overdue a coat of paint, I allowed myself the odd pause to savour a forgotten ‘find’. This poem on the cover of a ‘Miscellany of Garden Wisdom’ fits the bill:

I think it must be rather nice
To live by giving good advice
To talk of what the garden needs
Instead of pulling up the weeds.
Reginald Arkell (1881-1959)

Clever composting
Thinking of wildflowers and unwanted plant material, expert gardeners eulogise more over producing their own supply of compost than any engaging literature. I confess to being thrilled when my husband, Mike, added to the ‘ornamentation’ of our garden by recycling old pallets to construct a pair of bins, side by side – one for lawn cuttings, the other for general herbaceous garden waste.

This compost storage area is both sheltered and screened from view, sandwiched between two evergreens, a mighty tall, dense evergreen Leyland Cypress and a mature Portuguese laurel.

The front of each compartment is made of wooden slats slotted in loosely on top of each other. These simply lift out easily when turning over the vegetation to aerate and speed up gradual decomposition. In due course, this easy removal also enables shovelling out and carting away the precious crumbly mass to improve our stony soil and fertilise the flower beds.

The autumn leaves will soon be drifting by our windows. No longer does Mike ask me “Where shall we put the leaves?” Another discreet area by the garden fence and near the drive made the ideal spot for him to build three more bins, re-purposing old chicken wire, tucked neatly in a small grove beside the old cherry tree.

Such metal wire-netting boxes are easy to fill and, being open on all four sides, the leaves rot down quickly. Mike also empties in the odd layer of ash from our wood-burning stove. Each front can be easily unhooked in the mulching season to collect a barrow load of dark, rich leaf mould.

This gift of nitrogen-rich material will help amend and develop soil structure with different soil nutrients depending on the type of leaves. Importantly, it also helps to hold in soil moisture longer in periods of drought.

Both home-made compost and leaf mould are better than gold in bringing confidence and hope. An enriching part of the cycle of life, they succeed in making your garden grow healthily through the next four seasons. They provide more joy to this gardener than any towering delphinium or ripe strawberry – especially looking forward to potting up the spring bulbs, on this month’s ‘to do’ list.

These days, I have to chuckle when heading with waste towards our compost bins, recalling my father’s gleeful voice relating a rather unique take on gardening – not that I would ever dream of following this piece of garden advice!

A ‘Composition’
When hubby grows too old to keep,
We’ll shove him on the compost heap;
So when at length he decomposes
He’ll help to fertilise the roses.
Thus moving him from marriage bed
To bed of English rose instead;
And he may well console himself,
To know they’ll be in blooming health.
R.E.H. Hadingham, ‘Random Rhymes’ 1980

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