By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Our England is a garden that is full of stately views, / Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues’. So begins ‘The Glory of the Garden’, a classic poem about English gardens from one of the most popular poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
‘The Glory of the Garden’ by Rudyard Kipling
Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.