CORONATION FRUITS
Country Life
By S. L. BENSUSAN
FOR due ecienration of the forthcoming Coronation the Ministry of Health, while emphasising the value of voluntary effort, will permit Local Authorities to levy a rate ; every Parish through its Council can raise some money to make the occasion memorable within its limited boundaries. Apart from festivities proper to the day itself, various proposals for more permanent records are under discussion, and in this connexion the planting of memorial trees is widely favoured.
Undoubtedly most of our villages could be made more attractive by judicious planting. New villas with ugly brick walls and slate roofs, the monotonous essays of the ribbon- builder, the aggression of the petrol-station, all these might be hidden from sight and our countryside resume its pristine beauty. But what trees should be favoured ? Conifers, though quick to grow on quite poor land, are of small appeal, our hard woods take long to reach maturity; the nature of the soil must be a deciding factor. Should there be flowering trees of the kind one sees springing up along arterial roads where the Authorities have a sense of beauty and wish the ways to be attractive if only for a few weeks in the spring ? All these questions will be debated throughout the length and breadth of England, and as I ponder them my thoughts travel across the North Sea to the countryside of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, where the problem of beautifying the roads has been so delightfully solved first by planting fruit and then by looking after it.
In many rural districts of Central Europe you walk between rows of sturdy orchard trees, carefully tended, numbered and respected by old and young. In the spring they add to the attractions of walk or drive, in the autumn they add to the resources of the village to which they belong, for the fruit is sold by public auction and the proceeds are devoted to the public benefit. Every little town and village is proud of its trees and much, if not all the care given to them is by volun- tary workers, though if the crop be sold before it ripens the responsibility is with the buyer.
When I have suggested to friends or acquaintances in authoritythat we might follow the example of Middle Europe, one and all have raised the same objection, and that without a moment's hesitation : " The branches would be broken and the fruit stolen," they tell me. I must confess to certain doubts in this regard when I saw the first communal orcharding above Ems on the Lahn and spoke to a Burgomaster—I think that was his rank. He was astonished by my suspicions.
" Why should people wish to steal what is their own ? " he asked. " Whether the harvest be rich or poor, the price helps everyone. The children know that the trees are, so to speak, the property of their parents, and they regard it as they should."
" And strangers, tramps and others ? " I asked him.
" We lose nothing," he told me. " A tramp or a passer might pick up a windfall or two, but I can assure you that deliberate theft from the trees is unknown. All that is needed anywhere is the knowledge in village or town that wayside planting is for the beautifying of the roads and the profit of the people, then everyone seeks to protect his own." I told him that I feared there might be difficulties in England, and smiling, he waved the objection aside.
" You must have more faith in people's goodwill," he told me. " It is always there if you will take the trouble to bring it to the surface."
Why should he not have been right ? Who is prepared to say that English boys or girls of these latter times have a double dose of original sin ? In the bad pre-War years when the farm- worker earned two shillings a day for ten or twelve hours' work and lost money in wet weather, his children went hungry, even root vegetables were not safe and unprotected fruit could hardly have survived until it was ripe. Those times have gone, and the education of the rising generation is quite a _different proposition from the education of its parents. Today the theft of fruit is often an expression of high spirits.
It should be easily possible to arrange competitions between villages for the best fruit and best-tended trees, it should be possible to find amateur orchardists not only to do a little cultivating and pruning, but to teach interested boys and girls. You have only to look at cottage gardens to grasp the compe- tence of the husbandman. Budding, grafting, pruning, mulch- ing, all come naturally to him ; they are part of his inheritance. Doubtless, too, the County Agricultural Authority would advise as to the best varieties ; perhaps if the Ministry of Agriculture were approached it would provide a leaflet ad hoc. Beyond a doubt England would be more beautiful and better off if those who consider planting will bear the claims of fruit in mind.
Another very important question might be investigated if this work could be carried out. At present there are a few progressive and far-sighted orchardists in England who raise splendid crops by attending to the proper cultivation of the soil ; they do not rely upon the aid of a series of poisonous sprays to keep their crops from disease. For the great majority cultivation depends upon the application of one poison after another, and there are not wanting competent observers who believe that this treatment is responsible for an increasing number of disorders in the plant world from which the con- sumer must suffer in the end. It is easy, expert() rrede, to grow splendid fruit without recourse to copper, arsenic or lead, and the Coronation trees might live!' serve to drive the truth home.
The first step to be taken by any local authority would be to consult the County Agricultural Committee whose experts would say whether the roadway selected was suitable, and in that case what trees arc most likely to thrive. The selection should be planted in the next few weeks without any avoidable delay, and protected against rabbits. Then, if not before, the boys and girls could be approached in the village school and reminded that the best of the harvests would not be for the generation responsible for this endeavour but for the youngest among them. If their pride and their imagination could be touched, the chances are that the trees would thrive and the crop would be respected.
Why not take a leaf out of the book of that wise old Burgo- master and have faith in people's goodwill ? It would be a sad confession that we did not beautify England when occasion served because we could not trust our children.
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