Sowe Carrets
Gardening has a long and honourable history, not excluding divine endorsement. (As we are told in the book of Genesis, 'And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.')
An English proverb of the 17th century saw it as central to sustained happiness: 'If you would be happy for a week take a wife; if you would be happy for a month kill a pig; but if you would be happy all your life plant a garden.'
Other proverbs relate to methods of horticulture, from the warning 'One year's seeding makes seven years weeding', to the encouraging Chinese dictum, 'Select a proper site for your garden and half your work is done.'
Gardeners through the ages have left us their advice and comments. Richard Gardiner, at the end of the 16th century, was concerned with kitchen gardens. 'Sowe Carrets in your Gardens, and humbly praise God for them, as for a singular and great blessing.'
The scholar and courtier Francis Bacon was more concerned with appearance: 'Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.' Alexander Pope in the 18th century took a similar line: 'All gardening is landscape painting.'
Gardening can induce humility. 'But though an old man, I am but a young gardener' wrote the American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in 1811. But in the end, it is the note of sustenance that endures. To quote Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden: 'As long as one has a garden, one has a future; and as long as one has a future one is alive.'
Elizabeth Knowles
01/05/2006
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