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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 2 (May 1, 1939)

The Garden Country

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The Garden Country

New Zealand is fast qualifying for sole right to a new title—that of “The Garden Country.”

As we know, gardeners are not, as a class, notorious gad-abouts—although the first of the clan, the original Adam, seems to have made the first migration. But it would be a great thing if all the gardeners of the Dominion, professional and amateur alike, could make a leisurely trip through the country to see what their fellows are doing to make an earthly paradise of our rich Islands.

The average gardener enjoys his own plot of land and employs any arts and sciences he knows to make the most of it. But when he wanders, then he can compare and enjoy what others are doing, and carry new notions home for further experiment in the production of beauty in nature.

A begonia house to one gardener may be just a place for housing blooms of rich and radiant variety, with pots and beds placed in tiers to make a close array like an army glittering with banners.

But there are other methods of treatment. At New Plymouth, for instance, the gardener of Pukekura Park has seen in his begonias just a crowning glory for a green vista swinging upwards from a cool tunnel portal—a vista that outvies the loveliest conceptions of poets and painters of the Garden of Eden itself.

Look about any suburban or country settlement in New Zealand and you will be held up here and there by the charm of gardeners’ work with flowers and lawns, shrubs and trees and hedges—work that reveals the true eye for beauty and something more than the mere architectural arrangements of contour and colour in the infinity of forms with which these may be presented.

Amongst scenes such as these, an unsightly or neglected garden stands out as a sad spectacle of carelessness or ineptitude, telling that the owner or rentier is unworthy, not only of the opportunities that lie at his door, but also of association on the same plane with his more civilised neighbours.

In travels up and down the land, one cannot but be impressed by the great improvements effected during the past year or two in the general standard of home gardens. The whole picture is brighter—the country has had its face lifted. Clearly more time is being spent, and to better purpose, in the culture of gardens.

This is doubtless one of the imponderable, although very real, advantages of the 40-hour or 5-day week, an advantage which many lovers of the beautiful in nature have remarked and enjoyed. The effect of more time spent in gardening, and the resultant improvement in the appearance of home, streets and cities, is adding health to our peoples; it helps to calm the mind, to modify the pressure on blood and nerves, and adds to the opportunities of happiness and the beauty of life.