Flowers and Bricks
To sit in a cool, small garden while the shade temperature plays round ninety degrees, and the sun temperature in narrow, crowded streets filled with petrol fumes may have passed a hundred and thirty degrees for all I know, makes one realize how imperative it is for us to bring beauty back from the open country to our over-built and over-crowded cities. One of the saddest bits of town-spoiling I have watched since the War is the way tiny plots of ground which just held a tree or a few bushes to break the monotony of walls, have been devoured by the builder, and have disappeared under an incredibly mean dwelling-house or a garage. It is this complete crowding out of beauty from our streets which really makes town life hateful.
Can we not do something by a united effort to bring nature back within reach of the countless townsfolk who own no gardens and can never afford country holidays ? Our parks are indeed large and beautiful, but how is a very poor mother with five or six small children, living in one of the crowded streets remote from parks, going to give these children a sight of natural beauty ? Even a tenement house is more bearable if the windows look into the foliage of a large tree or a luxuriant creeper.
• It seems to me a possible ideal that a beautifying committee should form itself in every parish in our large towns, and begin work by a pilgrimage through every street and alley within its bounds, marking down every spot where space would allow of a hole one yard square being dug without hindrance to traffic. That hole, after being dug also a yard deep, should have all soil removed and replaced by the best loam and manure. In such a space, according to the surroundings, could be grown a wall creeper, a plant trained to a pole, a flowering shrub or a small tree. There are many plants now tested as capable of withstanding town conditions, and it might be no harm to realize that if the air in any place is bad enough to kill vegetation, it is not the kind of air God means little children to be planted in.
In obedience to a Borough order I was cutting some branches off a tree lately, and a hot, weary postman stopped to chat and said ruefully, " It's more trees like that we want, and not to cut away those we have"— with which view I sympathized, as there was room for a giant to pass in comfort, and only minds bound with red tape fail to realize how these spreading boughs shelter the passers-by from sun in heat waves and from rain in storms.
There are in many busy streets long stretches of dead wall, enclosing railway dep6ts, coal and wood stores, etc. When passing these I often long that some authority would open a hole at the foot of the walls about every eight or ten yards, and plant such hardy creepers as climbing knotweed, vines, or Virginian creeper, and trees capable of being tied out espalier-wise against walls. Figs, laburnums, flowering thorns, crab apples and many others flourish grown thus. Think of the miles of bare walls in London alone which could bring rest to the eyes and nerves, and a real inspiration to the minds and hearts of weary toilers who see nothing from one end of the week to another but bricks and dust.
There is a great deal more in what I plead for than mere outward beauty. " Consider the lilies of the field," is a hint for a very practical school of philosophy. And a race of men who have grown up without any opportunity of studying the laws of nature in the plant world have been most unjustly robbed of a great part of their birthright. The National Gardens Guild has taken " Brighter Streets " as one of its aims, and if any reader sees a chance of starting some such scheme as have outlined, the Guild will help to carry it through.
Naturally the objection will be raised that plants growing in a street are at the mercy of uncouth children,. They are. And the only practical answer to that is that it lies with our generation to teach enough public spirit in the schools to make this kind of vandalism impossible.
I saw a very excellent beginning of this spirit in the flower show held last month by our own local branch of the London Gardens Guild. A challenge shield is competed for yearly by the local schools. Every child is given a plant long beforehand to take home and cultivate. On the day of the show each child brings the plant to the hall to be staged in the school group. In this way the show cultivates a team spirit as opposed to a selfish one, and it is a very short step from that to a public spirit which will desire the success of every neighbour's garden, and will treat our street plantings as public property.
These recent attempts to bring flowers into the lives of the very poor are amongst the best movements of our day, I was shown a pinched little geranium at our show which belonged to a little girl who was one of five living in a single room. Try to think what that room is like in which five people have to spend every hour of their home life by day and night, and see the tiny flower-pot taking up a quite appreciable amount of precious space, but worth every inch of it.
Another splendid work is done by the London Child- ren's Gardens and Recreation Fund, whose organizer has put up a stout fight from time to time to get temporary possession of bits of waste building land in crowded areas. These have been converted into thriving vegetable gardens with the labour of boys and girls from the neigh- bouring schools. The delight these children take in the work, and their pride in the vegetables they carry home to their mothers, must be seen to be believed.
I think that in spite of many and obvious drawbacks, there is a special good fairy in charge of town gardeners, for we seem to get so very much more happiness out of our pocket-handkerchief-sized gardens than the majority of country folk do out of their acres. We know every root personally and learn its little fads (for town plants are very faddy) and we are so pleased with the odd mixture that our birds sow for us. They have brought me laburnums by the dozen, a grape vine, that quaint night- blooming datura, rosebay, poppies, and many other odds and ends. Then town gardening leads to unexpected friendships. When I paid the first visit to my garden after a long illness, I found that our window cleaner had come in and planted some of his treasures on my rockery; and at local shows one makes endless new friends who offer roots and cut flowers with generous hands. Is any other hobby quite so humanizing ? F. E. SETON.
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