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Conventions of Gardening in Victorian England
What Victorian-Era Gardens Meant to the English
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"Each culture endows garden forms with particular sets of meanings."
- Anne Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity, 1.

So What did Gardens Mean to the English in the Victorian Era?

 

The following are sources from the Victorian Era that provide some insight into what meanings gardens were given in this period.
  • The Glory of the Garden, 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 will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all ;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and theplanks.                               

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are  planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick.
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

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  • Gardens of England, E. T. Cook, 1903, p. 3

“There is a love of flowers fast knit into the very fibre of our British nature which probably lies at the root of the national reputation for gardening with which we are accredited.”

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  • John Ruskin, 8 February 1870 (Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity, 23)

“The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot remain herself a heap of cinders… She must yet again become the England she was once, and in all beautiful ways – more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure… and in her fields, ordered and wide fair, of every herb that sips the dew; and under the green avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the Sun.”

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  • Arthur Lee, Viscount Lee of Fareham (Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity, 10)

“In January 1897, when serving in Canada, I was turning over the newly arrived English papers in the Montreal Club and was thrilled to come across a new weekly journal [Country Life] of which the outstanding feature, as it seemed to me, was an intoxicating array of temptations in the shape of English country houses… which were at the disposal of any homesick exile who could make a fortune overseas and retire to his native land.”

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  • Dedication of Country Life, 1900 (Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity, 225)

 “All who are devoted to gardening, that love of flowers which seems ingrained in our national character, and which, in these days of unrest, or wars and rumours of wars, of fierce competition and striving for the mastery, has a soothing, refining influence, permeating to the nation’s advantage its home life.  We are transforming ourselves into a nation of gardeners, and pleasant it is to see those in possession of many broad acres seeking horticulture as a pastime, and endeavouring to gain an intimate knowledge of that great world of flowers whose beauties are hidden to so many, a sealed book, which, when opened, reveals something of the great mysteries of Nature.”

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  • The Spectator (Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity, 69)
“A tangled wilderness of weeds conjures up a vision of a neglected wife and children, and a hard-earned wage wasted in wanton drink.  While a gay garden plot – with herbs and rose bushes, sweet-peas running riot over bushes, covering them with their butterflies, white and red, and white and violet – betokens thrift and care and thoughtfulness.”

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