THE GARDENER AND THE GENTRY

ABOUT FIVE MILES FROM the capital there was an old manor house with thick walls, towers, and corbie gables.

A rich, noble family lived there, but only in the summer. This manor was the best and most beautiful of all the properties they owned. It looked like new outside and was full of comfort and coziness inside. The family coat of arms was engraved in stone above the estate gate, and beautiful roses were entwined around the crest and bay windows. A carpet of grass was spread out in front of the manor house. There were red and white hawthorn and rare flowers, even outside the greenhouse.

The family also had a very capable gardener. It was a delight to see the flower garden, and the fruit orchard and vegetable garden. Next to this there was still a remnant of the original old garden—some box hedges—clipped to form crowns and pyramids. Behind these stood two huge old trees. They were always almost leafless, and you could easily have believed that a stormy wind or a waterspout had spread big clumps of manure over them, but every clump was a bird nest.

A huge flock of shrieking rooks and crows had built nests here from times immemorial. It was an entire city of birds, and the birds were the masters, the occupiers of the property, the oldest family on the estate, and the real masters of the manor. None of the people down there concerned them, but they tolerated these crawling creatures, except that sometimes they banged with their guns, so it tickled the birds’ backbones and caused every bird to fly up in fear and cry, “scum, scum!”

The gardener often talked to the master and mistress about having the old trees cut down. They didn’t look good, and if they were gone, they would most likely be rid of the screaming birds, who would go elsewhere. But the master and mistress didn’t want to be rid of either the trees or the birds because they were from old times. Anything from old times was something the estate could and should not lose.

“Those trees are the birds’ inheritance, my good Larsen. Let them keep them.” The gardener’s name was Larsen, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Larsen, don’t you have enough room to work? The whole flower garden, the greenhouses, fruit and vegetables gardens?”

He did have those, and he cared for, watched over, and cultivated them with zeal and skill, and the master and mistress acknowledged that, but they didn’t conceal from him that they often ate fruits and saw flowers when visiting that surpassed what they had in their own gardens. That saddened the gardener because he always strived to do the best he could. He was good-hearted and good at his job.

One day the master and mistress called him in and told him in a gentle and lordly manner that the day before they had eaten some apples and pears at distinguished friends that were so juicy and so delicious that they and all the other guests had expressed their greatest admiration. The fruits were certainly not domestic, but they should be imported, and should be grown here if the climate would allow it. They knew that the fruits had been bought in town at the best greengrocer’s. The gardener was to ride into town and find out where the apples and pears had come from and then write for grafts.

The gardener knew the greengrocer well because he was the very one to whom, on the master’s behalf, he sold the surplus fruit that grew in the estate gardens.

And the gardener went to town and asked the greengrocer where he had gotten those highly acclaimed apples and pears.

“They’re from your own garden!” said the greengrocer and showed him both the apples and pears that he immediately recognized.

Well, how happy this made the gardener! He hurried back to the master and mistress and told them that both the apples and pears were from their own garden.

But the master and mistress simply couldn’t believe it. “It’s not possible, Larsen! Can you get this confirmed in writing from the greengrocer?”

And he could and did do that. He brought the written certification.

“This is really strange!” said the master and mistress.

Every day big platters of the magnificent apples and pears from their own garden appeared on the table. Bushels and barrels full of these fruits were sent to friends in town and out of town, even to foreign countries! What a pleasure! But of course they had to add that it had been two amazingly good summers for the fruit trees. Good fruit was being produced all over the country.

Some time passed. The master and mistress were invited to dinner at court. The day after this they called in the gardener. They had gotten melons at the table from the royal greenhouses that were so juicy and tasty.

“You must go to the royal gardener, dear Larsen, and get us some of the seeds of those priceless melons!”

“But the royal gardener got the seeds from us!” said the gardener, quite pleased.

“Well, then that man has the knowledge to bring fruit to a higher level of development!” said the master. “Each melon was remarkable.”

“Well, I can be proud then,” said the gardener. “I must tell your lordship that the royal gardener didn’t have luck with his melons this year, and when he saw how splendid ours were and tasted them, he ordered three of them for the castle.”

“Larsen! You’re not telling me those were melons from our garden?!”

“I think so!” said the gardener, who went to the royal gardener and got written confirmation that the melons on the kingly table came from the manor.

It really was a surprise for the master and his lady, and they didn’t keep quiet about the story. They showed the certificate, and melon seeds were sent around widely, just as the pear and apple grafts had been earlier.

And word was received that they grew and produced exceptional fruit, and these melon seeds were named after the noble estate, so that that name could now be read in English, German, and French.

No one could have imagined this!

“Just so the gardener doesn’t get a swollen head about this,” said the master and mistress.

But the gardener took it all in a different way. He just wanted to establish his name as one of the country’s best gardeners, to try each year to bring forth something superior in all the types of garden plants, and he did that. But often he was told that the very first fruits he had produced, the apples and pears, were really the best. All later types were inferior to them. The melons had certainly been very good, but that was something completely different. The strawberries could be called exceptional, but yet not better than those other noble families had, and when the radishes didn’t turn out one year, only those unfortunate radishes were discussed, none of the other good things that were produced.

It was almost as if the master and mistress felt a relief in saying, “Things didn’t work out this year, Larsen!” They were quite happy to be able to say, “It didn’t work out this year.”

A couple of times a week the gardener brought fresh flowers up to the living room, and they were always so beautifully arranged. The colors seemed to be more vibrant through the arrangement.

“You have taste, Larsen,” said the master and mistress. “It’s a gift, given by the Lord, not of your own doing.”

One day the gardener brought a large crystal saucer in which a lily pad was floating. On top of this was placed a shining blue flower, as big as a sunflower with its long thick stem trailing down in the water.

“The lotus of the Hindus!” exclaimed the master and mistress.

They had never seen such a flower, and during the day it was placed in the sunshine and in the evening under reflected light. Everyone who saw it thought it was remarkably lovely and rare. Even the most distinguished of the country’s young ladies said so, and she was a princess. She was both wise and good.

The master and mistress were honored to give her the flower, and it went with the princess to the palace. Then they went down into the garden to pick such a flower themselves, if one was still there, but they couldn’t find one. So they called the gardener and asked where he had gotten the blue Lotus.

“We’ve searched in vain,” they said. “We’ve been in the greenhouses and round about in the flower gardens.”

“No, it’s not to be found there,” said the gardener. “It’s just a simple flower from the vegetable garden! But isn’t it true that it’s beautiful? It looks like a blue cactus, but it’s only the blossom on the artichoke!”

“You should have told us that straight off!” said the master and mistress. “We thought it was a rare, foreign flower. You have disgraced us with the young princess! She saw the flower here, and thought it was beautiful and didn’t know what it was. She is very knowledgeable about botany, but her knowledge doesn’t have anything to do with vegetables! How could it occur to you, Larsen, to bring such a flower up to the house? It makes a laughing stock of us!”

And the beautiful, gorgeous blue flower, which had been picked in the vegetable garden, was taken out of the living room, where it didn’t belong. Then the master and mistress apologized to the princess and told her that the flower was just a kitchen herb that the gardener had wanted to display, but he had been sternly admonished about placing it on display.

“That’s a shame and not fair,” said the princess. “He has opened our eyes to a magnificent flower that we had not paid any attention to. He has shown us beauty where we did not think to seek it. As long as the artichokes are blooming, the royal gardener will bring one to my parlor every day.” And that’s what happened.

So then the master and mistress told the gardener that he could bring them a fresh artichoke flower again. “It is pretty after all,” they said, “quite remarkable!” And the gardener was praised. “Larsen likes that,” they said. “He’s a spoiled child!”

In the autumn there was a terrible storm. It started at night, and became so powerful that many big trees at the edge of the forest were torn up by the roots, much to the distress of the master and mistress. A great distress for them, but to the joy of the gardener, the two big trees with all the bird nests blew over. You could hear rooks and crows screaming at the height of the storm. People at the manor said that they flapped their wings against the windows.

“Well, now you’re happy, Larsen,” said the master and mistress. “The storm has knocked down the trees, and the birds have fled to the forest. Now nothing’s left from the old days here. Every sign and every allusion are gone! It’s very sad for us.”

The gardener didn’t say anything, but he thought about what he had long thought about—how to utilize the splendid sunny spot he didn’t have access to before. It would become the ornament of the garden, and the joy of his master and mistress.

The big fallen trees had crushed and completely destroyed the ancient box hedges, with their topiary. Here the gardener planted a thicket of growth—native plants from the meadows and forest. He planted with rich abundance what no other gardeners had thought belonged in a gentry’s garden, into the type of soil the plants needed and with the amount of shade and sun required by each type. He took care of them with love, and they grew splendidly.

The juniper bushes from the heaths of Jutland grew in form and color like the cypress of Italy. The shiny prickly holly, evergreen in winter cold or summer sun, was a delight to see. In front of them grew ferns of many different kinds. Some looked like they were children of the palm tree, and others as if they were parents of the delicate lovely vegetation we call maiden-hair. Here too was the despised burdock that is so lovely in its freshness that it can appear in bouquets. The dock stood on high ground, but lower, where it was damper, grew the common dock, also a despised plant, but with its height and huge leaves still so artistically lovely. Transplanted from the meadow grew the waist-high mullein like a magnificent many-armed candelabra with flower next to flower. There were woodruff, primroses, and forest lily of the valley, the white Calla, and the delicate three-leafed wood sorrel. It was beautiful to see.

In the front small pear trees from France grew in rows tied to wire cord. They received sun and good care and soon produced big, juicy fruit as in the land they came from.

Instead of the old leafless trees, a tall flagpole was installed, where the Danish flag flew and close to that another pole where in the summer and autumn the hop vines twisted with their fragrant cones of flowers, but where in winter an oat sheaf was hung, according to an old custom, so that the birds of the sky should have food in the merry time of Christmas.

“Larsen is getting sentimental in his old age,” said the master and mistress, “but he is loyal and attached to us.”

At the New Year there was a picture of the old estate in one of the capital’s illustrated magazines. You could see the flagpole and the oat-sheaf for the birds at Christmas time, and it was stressed what a good idea it was that an old custom was upheld and honored. So appropriate for the old estate!

“Everything that that Larsen does,” said the master and mistress, “is heralded by drums! He’s a lucky man! We almost have to be proud that we have him!”

But they were not at all proud of that. They felt that they were the master and mistress, and they could let Larsen go anytime, but they didn’t do that. They were good people, and there are many good people of their type, and that’s good for many a Larsen.

Well, that’s the story of the gardener and the gentry, and now you can think about it.