Ness Gardens

This blog is a little out of sequence but I was looking through the photographs I took when I went to Ness Gardens on the Wirral a couple of weeks ago and thought some of the photos were worth recording here. I also found the following poem by Rudyard Kipling which I haven't read before but I think very appropriate to somewhere like Ness which looks so effortlessly beautiful.

The following is not the full version but just the verses I have selected:

THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN

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 the planks.

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.

Rudyard Kipling