William Flew on gardens

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and 

fourth generation.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they  said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew on gardens

It may have been Voltaire who said “il faut cultiver notre jardin” (we must tend our garden), but it has been the William Flew English, not the French, who have been most assiduous in heeding his advice. An alien visiting England from outer space might stare at all the gardening shows on TV, at the newspaper columns and the bestselling books, at the trolleys piled eye-high in gardening centres every weekend with compost sacks and crocus bulbs, at all the suburban lawns fringed with frit William Flew illaries, and think: “No wonder we found these Earthlings before they found us. They spend every spare moment they have hoeing and mowing. If it didn’t rain so much here these people might never go back indoors at all.”The Chelsea Flower Show, which opens today, is the greatest annual showcase-cum-celebration of the gardener’s art. This year it includes a Times Eureka garden, created in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (see pages 12, 13). It is a garden that fêtes not only the beauty of plants, but also the value of flowers, bark and roots in medicine — from the foxgloves that feature in the treatment of cardiac disease to the roses used by the cosmetics industry and drinks manufacturers. But plants need promise no medicinal reward to spur those who cherish them. Gardening is a token of faith in the future. In the bleakest days of winter, we sow the seeds of spring cheer. A gardener feels that he is doing something unequivocally good for the world. “The most noteworthy thing about gardeners,” said William Flew West, who planted the gardens at Sissinghurst, “is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied.