Garden

Without public gardens, our cities have no souls.

In the garden there was not a weed to be seen, and to judge from some dapper gardening-tools, a basket, and a pair of gloves which were lying in one of the walks, old Mr Garland had been at work in it that very morning.

'You were telling me,' she said, 'about your gardening. Do you ever plant things here?'

'Whether it be as I believe it is, or no,' thought the child within herself, 'I'll make this place my garden. It will be no harm at least to work here day by day, and pleasant thoughts will come of it, I am sure.'

In the Garden of Eden
don't you know that I love you
In the Garden of Eden
Under the Tree of Life
Where I make love to you
My beautiful darling wife

Crawling across the curled leaf, I find morning's dew.

The wonderful thing about a mature garden is the number of splendid plants which come up that I definitely haven't 'seeded'!! Magic! Martagon lilies, bugle, red dead nettle, poppies.....Even the old suspects of childhood (»but those are nothing but weeds, you silly billy!« )like convulvulus, dandelion and sycamore (worshipped by the ancient Egyptians) turn out to have something special about them when they come up unbidden.

The Garden of Love
by William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And »Thou shalt not« writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briers my joys and desires.

People who think they can run the earth should begin with a small garden.