On Gardening Matters

From Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols
Copyright 1998, Timber Press

The urns, as we have already observed, were really the beginning of the garden at Merry Hall; they were the first signs of order and elegance in the surrounding chaos; and as our story unfolds, and the years roll by, I hope that you will come to love them, and all the experiments we have made with them.

I think that they are at their loveliest on a summer evening, when the clematis Jackmanii - (which may be 'common' but is also ravishingly beautiful) - swirls up the pillars in a dark flurry of purple blossom to mingle with the Victorian pink of the 'apple-blossom' geraniums with which they are filled. It is an enchanting marriage of colour, a sort of floral love-affair; and if you walk down the lane so that you see this exquisite duel against the sombre background of the copper beech, you will feel that life is very much worth living, and that you really had a very bright idea when you decided to be born.

Or on a sharp March morning under the cold skies, when they are filled with tall white hyacinths. The best place to see them, then, is from the upper lawn. They look very formal and clear-cut and severe, and the white of the blossom shines like snow against the grey of the ploughed fields on the other side of the hedge.

Or in late September, when we do all sorts of cunning things with pots of grape vines, which twirl around and give the effect of Bacchanalian orgies, and put ideas into people's heads.

I need hardly say that there have been failures. There have been times when the urns have looked like the hats of angry old women at matinees. There have been other times when they have looked as though they had come straight from the crematorium at Golders Green, after the funeral of a very prosperous banker. There have even been times when they have looked cold and forlorn and empty and undecided. But those times have been very much in the minority. As a general rule they have been magic chalices, waiting for the gardener to come and weave his spells.

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