You are perfectly entitled to answer my question by saying that you hold a deed for the ground that includes your garden, and you may tell me that it is fenced in or that it is your backyard, wherever you live.
As a good citizen, you know that you are legally protected in the ownership or tenancy of property to which you are entitled by deed or lease and also that you have police protection, so far as that goes.
But if yours is a good garden, it is because the sun, rain, and moving air have access to it.
The making and maintenance of the garden in which you take pride in ownership were and are dependent upon all the natural forces, plus your efforts in cultivation and fertilization.
And if you thoughtfully analyze the situation, you must admit that your contribution has been rather small.
Delight of a Well-Maintained Garden
You can enjoy your garden even if city streets bound it or are in a more or less protected backyard.
I have in mind an exquisitely fine small backyard garden. This good lady controlling was originally faced with the difficulties of shadow from houses on one side and of fences on the other three.
Convinced that she could make things grow anyway, she carefully selected ferns and other plants that would endure shade, shelter, and scanty access to the warming sun. The result, as I saw it more than once, was thoroughly delightful, unusual, and surprising.
There was no display of roses, phlox, or the other conventional summer flowers. Still, many dainty fern fronds seemed to me to speak the garden language most beautifully nonetheless.
Sense of Ownership and Appreciation
For many years, I have been unable to keep my eyes off the plant growth on the other side of the fence or hedge that encloses the property of someone whose home I happen to be passing.
Somehow, it seems to me that since it is visited and largely maintained by God’s sun and air and rain, it is partly my garden, especially since I can see it just as well as the owner of the “fee simple” and possibly enjoy it even more.
Promoting Gardens in Unexpected Places
I recall an instance when I was promoting a backyard garden contest with several other garden-minded people in the slum district of Harrisburg.
When we went about on a visit of inspection, we were accompanied by a small mob of slum-dwelling boys and girls who jeered at the various attempts to make the backyard better than a display of garbage cans and other eyesores.
But the announcement that the prize we controlled was to be awarded to a little backyard corner that an inspired child had used for the home of a single geranium cared for with obvious loving anxiety produced astonishing results in the neighborhood.
All the boys and girls who had jeered wanted gardens, and they made them, more or less effectively, as circumstances permitted.
Ownership and Enjoyment of Others’ Garden
But this is not an essay on promoting slum renovation. I would rather have others believe with me that every beautiful growing thing I can see with the eyes I have used for more than fourscore years is mine while I am looking at it.
If I can see it and perceive beauty in it, I can get just as much out of it as its legal owner, perhaps even more. Thus, I am answering my question about who owns the garden, all gardens, and all outdoor beauty.
Looking at Gardens in Different Cultures
The garden gate at Breeze Hill is decorated with Clematis paniculata, which I admit interferes materially with its easy opening and closing.
But it delights the eye and the sense of smell sufficiently to more than compensate for the little extra muscular effort required to use the gate.
That is to say, I have taken the medicine I am prescribing, and my garden is open to all. In fact, after more than 20 years of this experience, and have established a little “rose house” in which there is a garden register, I can witness many appreciative remarks recorded by those who have come to see, love and, I hope, accept the general ownership of all growing beauty which must he intended by the good God who made it.
Overcoming Concerns About Open Gardens
I have never had the opportunity to go about enough in England to try to look into their backyards.
I do know, however, that there is a strongly entrenched feeling for seclusion and protection over there, which was sorrowfully reported to me by a dear old ministerial friend who had long saved money to pay for his trip to the home of John Wesley.
He made the trip, but when he got to the Wesley home in Epworth, he found it completely shut in by a high brick wall so that he could not see at all the garden or the surroundings, which were the main object of his journey. This, to me, is wrong from every standpoint.
The Shared Ownership of Gardens
As it has often been said to me, it may be said that if the garden were open, flowers would be stolen and the plantings disarranged. But I have not found it so at Breeze Hill in the more than 20 years of maintaining a garden openly accessible to the city’s people.
I can report no vandalism worth mentioning, even though a whole school has been brought to the garden more than once to look at the roses.
In honesty, I must confess that grapes have been stolen, but not by the average incidental visitor so much as by an almost identified pirate who seems to think his enjoyment of the grapes should come before mine.
Spiritual Connection To Gardens
Ten thousand questions many times over have been asked me by those who have seen something they admired at Breeze Hill.
And I may say, too, that all my helpers are with me in a strong desire to pass on such knowledge as we may to those who see and admire.
Why should they not be? They, too, are the garden owners, even though they have had nothing to do with the title, taxes, or upkeep.
After all, I get my authority for these thoughts in the second chapter of Genesis, where we are told, “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and out of the ground made the Lord God grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”
It will be noted that the garden was good to look at before it was made to provide fruit, and I think this properly stands as an instruction on making pleasant gardens for the people who still live on the earth.
That gardens are to be seen by all who wish to see them is so obvious that I need not further discuss this point of view.
Only once or twice in my life have I willingly gone into a walled garden, and then only because the gardener had particularly developed the thoughts I am endeavoring to inspire since he used the walls to create garden beauty.
Continuing To Advance in Gardening
What I have written here is an attempt to make plain my feeling that God owns my garden. My ownership is really in trust for what has long seemed to me to be the general purposes of gardens, as stated in Genesis.
I have often gone into my garden with a grouch, and occasionally, when I have entered it, I harbored doubts.
But in every case, the garden’s absorptive power has worked on my spirit, and I can honestly say that the basic belief I have tried to express has been amply confirmed.
This series of discussions that Flower Grower continues to publish has dealt intimately with a good many garden things. In stating my beliefs these November days, I am, I think, suggesting thoughtful garden advancement.
Thanksgiving Day will be celebrated this month, and we look forward to the Christmas anniversary next month.
If we are consciously thankful for the beauties and wonders of our gardens, and if we keep thinking upward and onward, we shall be gardening, I believe, toward the glory of God.
44659 by J. Horace Mcfarland