A Garden That Welcomes Strangers



By Allen Lacy



I do not know what became of her, and I never learned her name. But I feel that I knew her from the garden she had so lovingly made over many decades.

The house she lived in lies two miles from mine – a simple, two-story structure with the boxy plan, steeply-pitched roof and unadorned lines that are typical of houses built in the middle of the nineteenth century near the New Jersey shore.

Her garden was equally simple. She was not a conventional gardener who did everything by the book, following the common advice to vary her plantings so there would be something in bloom from the first crocus in the spring to the last chrysanthemum in the fall. She had no respect for the rule that says that tall-growing plants belong at the rear of a perennial border, low ones in the front and middle-sized ones in the middle, with occasional exceptions for dramatic accent.

In her garden, everything was accent, everything was tall, and the evidence was plain that she loved three kinds of plant and three only: roses, clematis and lilies, intermingled promiscuously to pleasant effect but no apparent design.

She grew a dozen sorts of clematis, perhaps 50 plants in all, trained and tied so that they clambered up metal rods, each rod crowned intermittently throughout the summer by a rounded profusion of large blossoms of dark purple, rich crimson, pale lavender, light blue and gleaming white.

Her taste in roses was old-fashioned. There wasn′t a single modern hybrid tea rose or floribunda in sight. Instead, she favored the roses of other ages – the York and Lancaster rose, the cabbage rose, the damask and the rugosa rose in several varieties. She propagated her roses herself from cuttings stuck directly in the ground and protected by upended gallon jugs.

Lilies, I believe were her greatest love. Except for some Madonna lilies it is impossible to name them, since the wooden flats stood casually here and there in the flower bed, all thickly planted with dark green lily seedlings. The occasional paper tag fluttering from a seed pod with the date and record of a cross showed that she was an amateur hybridizer with some special fondness for lilies of a warm muskmelon shade or a pale lemon yellow.

She believed in sharing her garden. By her curb there was a sign: “This is my garden, and you are welcome here. Take whatever you wish with your eyes, but nothing with your hand.”

Until five years ago, her garden was always immaculately tended, the lawn kept fertilized and mowed, the flower bed free of weeds, the tall lilies carefully staked. But then something happened. I don′t know what it was, but the lawn was mowed less frequently, then not at all. Tall grass invaded the roses, the clematis, the lilies. The elm tree in her front yard sickened and died, and when a coastal gale struck, the branches that fell were never removed.

With every year, the neglect has grown worse. Wild honeysuckle and bittersweet run rampant in the garden. Sumac, ailanthus, poison ivy and other uninvited things threaten the few lilies and clematis and roses that still struggle for survival.

Last year the house itself went dead. The front door was padlocked and the windows covered with sheets of plywood. For many months there has been a for sale sign out front, replacing the sign inviting strangers to share her garden.

I drive by that house almost daily and have been tempted to load a shovel in my car trunk, stop at her curb and rescue a few lilies from the smothering thicket of weeds. The laws of trespass and the fact that her house sits across the street from a police station have given me the cowardice to resist temptation. But her garden has reminded me of mortality; gardeners and the gardens they make are fragile things, creatures of time, hostages to chance and to decay.

Last week, the for sale sign out front came down and the windows were unboarded. A crew of painters arrived and someone cut down the dead elm tree. This morning there was a moving van in the driveway unloading a swing set, a barbecue grill, a grand piano and a houseful of sensible furniture. A young family is moving into that house.

I hope that among their number is a gardener whose special fondness for old roses and clematis and lilies will see to it that all else is put aside until that flower bed is restored to something of its former self.





欢迎陌生人的花园

文/艾伦莱西

我对她的境遇一无所知，我甚至不曾获悉她的芳名。我们的结缘始于一个花园，而这个花园就是她数十载前的呕心沥血之作。

她住的地方与我这有2英里的路程。我住的地方很简陋，是在一个靠近新泽西海岸的四四方方的两层建筑物里，它始建于19世纪中叶，其最大特色就是陡峭严峻的屋顶和未施粉黛的表面。

她的花园非常简单。因为她并非那种按部就班的园艺家，什么事都照本宣科，随波逐流，在花园里种满各式各样的花草，就为了确保从在春天率先争放的番红花，到在秋天压轴出场的菊花，整个期间院子都是一幅繁花似锦的景象。她对那些条条框框都嗤之以鼻，什么高大挺拔的植物就要种植在最后面，不高不矮的位于中间，小巧玲珑的位居最前面，除非有非常特殊的情况才会有例外。

然而在她的花园里，一草一木皆例外，万物皆是高大挺拔。原因很简单，因为她只钟情于三种植物：玫瑰、女萎属、百合花，并将三种植物杂乱无章的羼杂在一起，而这不加雕琢的设计却有一种别有洞天的感觉。

她种了几十种女萎属，全部种类加起来也许有50种，她将这些裁剪修饰过的植物绑在金属杆上，好让它们顺杆而上。这样在整个夏天每个金属杆的顶部都将会你来我往地呈现出一片百花争艳、桃红柳绿的景象，有暗紫色的、深红色的、淡紫色的、浅蓝色的、雪白色的，交相呼应。

她对玫瑰的品味却是爱素好古。在她的花园里看不到任何一株现代杂交玫瑰如香水月季或花束月季。相反她却对一些年代久远的各式各类的西洋玫瑰、洋蔷薇、大马士革蔷薇、蔷薇花情有独钟。她用扦插的方法来养殖玫瑰，并把带有金银边罐子盖在上面借此起到保护作用。

我认为他的最爱当属百合花。当然除了无法命名的白百合花，因为她在花坛里随处可见的木板上都种满了密密麻麻的深绿色百合幼苗。豆荚上的标签会偶尔飘落，从标签上记录着的日期和杂交品种来看，她只是一个对暖色调的甜瓜色或浅柠檬色百合情有独钟的业余杂交爱好者。

她将花园对外开放。花园地围墙上写着：“我的花园，欢迎你的光临，请尽情地欣赏，切勿摘拿。”

直到五年前，她的花园依旧是干净整洁的，她会按时对草坪进行施肥和修剪，将高大挺秀的百合花小心翼翼的支撑起来，花坛里也没有任何一株杂草的踪迹。后来发生了一些事情，至于什么事情我也不清楚。之后，她修剪草坪的次数与日剧减，再后来，就彻底不做了。整个花园里茅草连天，昔日的玫瑰，百合、女萎属都逐渐淹没在芿荏的洪流中。庭院前面的榆树也早已病入膏肓，奄奄一息，狂风肆虐，树枝凋零，满目苍痍却不再有人清理。

随着时间的推移情况都愈演愈烈。野忍冬花和美洲南蛇藤如雨后春笋般地占领了花园。漆树、臭椿 、毒葛以及其他不速之客给那些所剩无几、竭尽全力想要生存下来的玫瑰、百合、女萎属造成了威胁。

去年房屋彻底地与世隔绝了。房子的前门被锁上了，窗户也用覆一层胶合板封了起来。长达数月之久，欢迎外宾入园参观的标志不复存在取而代之的是房屋出售的标志。

我几乎每天都驾车去那里，把车停在街道的路缘，也曾试图在后备箱里放一把铁锹去拯救在肆意横生的杂草丛中寥寥可数的百合花。由于这种行为属于私闯民宅，加之这所房子的马路对面就是警察局，我也只是薄志弱行。但是她的花园却使我想起了死亡；园艺家及他们创造出的花园都是脆弱不堪的，他们受时间的掌控，听天由命，随时可能骨化形销。

就在上周，写有房屋出售的标牌和窗户的遮挡板都不翼而飞了。一帮画家来到此地，也不知是谁砍掉了枯死的榆树。今天早晨，一辆搬家卡车停在了马路上，从车上卸下一个秋千、一个烧烤架、一架三角钢琴和一整套智能家具。一个年轻的家庭即将入住这所房子。

我希望他们中有一个是园艺家，也对年代久远的玫瑰、百合、女萎情有独钟，能承诺当务之急是恢复花园原有风貌。

（选自 Patterns: A Short Prose Reader, by Mary Lou Conlin, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983.)