Having gone to the USA for my first, second, fourth and fifth choices, and Ireland for my third and Scotland for my sixth, I choose for my seventh to make my first trip into the land where I currently reside: England.
And more specifically, to Alton in the county of Hampshire, some 55 miles south-west of London. And to Alton girl, Maggie Holland, now long since domiciled in Edinburgh. How I love her noticeably rural Hampshire accent: she must almost be amongst the last generation of folk in Hampshire who still spoke with that accent – a first cousin linguistically to the gorgeous almost West Country burr of the late great John Arlott, who grew up between the wars in nearby Basingstoke – and that is why her version of the song below has greater appeal for me than that of the admittedly magnificent June Tabor. It was June’s version, some 5 years after Maggie’s, which really put the song on the map: and I salute her for her efforts. And it is truly lovely...assuming you like perfection that is.
But I am more drawn to imperfection, methinks. Within reason, I mean. No Florence Foster Jenkins for me.
But I like someone singing from the heart, and with the odd crack in the voice, and the occasional not-quite-hit note. And as I say, when you have that rural mid Hampshire accent to boot, well...you cannot go wrong. (Just listen to the charming way she pronounces the word "found" in the opening line: that vowel sound is pure mid Hampshire...and the listener is thus won over from the start.)
And that accent is being lost almost by the day in the area. Maybe the rot set in immediately after WW2, when nearby Basingstoke was designated as a London overspill town, and the London accent started to take over the area.
Anyway, enough on accents...let’s get down to business...and the song I have chosen.
Here below are the lyrics: please read them closely before clicking the YouTube link which is also below.
A PROPER SORT OF GARDENER
(Maggie Holland)
Once upon a time I found a garden,
Picked the brightest things that I could see;
An apron full of Mr Harding's flowers,
I didn't know that he was watching me.
Straight away my mother ran to tell him
Wondering what he would say or do.
Mr Harding smiled and said, "She's just a little child;
I knew that she'd be picking them for you."
By the fire my dad would read me stories.
One of them concerned a garden too,
Where the lion and the lamb lay down together
Every lovely fruit and flower grew.
The gardener let his children in to play there,
Delighting in the brightness of the day,
But when they went exploring and took a fruit to taste
He cursed them both and sent them on their way.
Even then I realised in my childish mind
That he wasn't a proper gardener of the Mr Harding kind.
Mr Harding's garden was all taken
By lesser men with concrete in their minds.
Factory chimneys grew instead of daisies,
No butterflies from that assembly line.
My mum she faded faster than a flower,
Dad sat in the darkness and cried.
Mr Harding walks a little slower than before,
But still he tends the grave where they lie.
Wherever it is they've gone to I hope that they will find
A proper sort of garden of the Mr Harding kind.
The foolish woman sometimes feels despairing
Because it seems so difficult to find.
The child tries to plant a little everywhere she goes
That special love of the Mr Harding kind.
Someday when I'm older maybe I shall find
That I've grown into a gardener of the Mr Harding kind.
As I said above, June Tabor’s decision to record the song in 1997, did a lot to popularise it, but those of us who were hooked on Maggie’s original version on her 1992 album Down To The Bone, would brook no alternative.
I am sorry that no video exists of Maggie singing her masterpiece, but I have made up for it with film of Maggie singing what I consider her second greatest song (Perfumes of Arabia)...which you will find at the end of this piece. (And yes, I really do rate it more highly than her much-lauded song A Place Called England. And if that identifies me as a dunce, so be it.)
So now, please click the link below to Maggie singing, and immediately scroll back up to the lyrics and read them simultaneous to her singing them...
Okay, down to business: let’s look at the song.
In many ways it is the easiest of the seven (so far) in this series, to derive meaning from. You hardly have to be the great Christopher Ricks decoding Bob Dylan here: there is no question of “what does he mean with that bizarre image?”
Maggie does not write her songs armed with a rhyming dictionary. She has no need to.
But just like deliberately abstruse poems are not as deep as they think they are – indeed you plumb the shallows of some of them – so it is that the clearest poems are often the deepest: just like a clear pool is so much deeper than a dirty puddle.
And songs do not get much more profound than this beautiful hymn of praise to a man – and indeed a place in time – which we will not see again.
Why won’t we? Well, because this song is autobiographical, and the little house in Alton where Maggie lived with her parents, is no more. As is Mr Harding’s garden. Somebody once told me that he heard Maggie once say that they were tied-cottages for workers on the Courage’s Alton Brewery site. They were bulldozed (along with the then brewery) to make way for a giant, new expanded Harp Lager Brewery. Was he correct that they were tied cottages? Maybe...certainly it sounds very plausible.
Or was it - as I had always believed - that they were privately owned houses on land adjoining the previous brewery, that were subject to a "compulsory purchase order" when the consortium of brewers behind the giant new expanded brewery, managed to persuade the council in Alton that the houses and their gardens just had to go? The council then would have inevitably caved-in, as the new brewery brought with it the promise of additional jobs.
Which was it? Perhaps some reader will kindly tell me. Not that it really matters: the net result was the same...the loss of the garden with its accompanying loss of innocence.
As Mark Twain once opined...”progress was alright once, but it went on too long”...and proof of that is that the Harp Brewery site (which later switched to the brewing of Coors) was also demolished - and fairly recently, at that - and is now occupied by private houses again. Pity they could not have left Mr Harding’s garden where it was ...and saved themselves half a century of musical chairs...
Mind you, we’d better strike that last sentence: had Mr Harding’s garden not been lost, then we’d have missed this wonderful song.
Enough of my musing...
Right...so let’s look at that opening verse. What a sweet picture it paints. Not a picture that is alien to any of us.
Once upon a time I found a garden, Picked the brightest things that I could see; An apron full of Mr Harding's flowers, I didn't know that he was watching me. Straight away my mother ran to tell him Wondering what he would say or do. Mr Harding smiled and said, "She's just a little child; I knew that she'd be picking them for you."
Okay, clearly Mr Harding is made of the stuff that saints are made of, I guess...and most of us scallywags would have had a gardener neighbour of ours putting his boot three lace holes up our fundament, if, that is, he had managed to catch up with us as we ran away.
But hey, you certainly do not have to suspend disbelief to buy into that verse. Clearly Mr Harding knew the young Maggie, and believed in her goodness. And such people as Mr Harding do exist: I am married to one. My wife like Mr Harding, always sees the good in people...in contrast to me (someone who is much more pessimistic about many of my fellow men and women).
And now the second verse with its brilliant scene-shift to the Garden of Eden...
By the fire my dad would read me stories. One of them concerned a garden too, Where the lion and the lamb lay down together Every lovely fruit and flower grew. The gardener let his children in to play there, Delighting in the brightness of the day, But when they went exploring and took a fruit to taste He cursed them both and sent them on their way.
And then we come to this astonishing couplet (given that it is a tiny kid who has come to this realisation)...
Even then I realised in my childish mind That he wasn't a proper gardener of the Mr Harding kind.
Wow! That is “one in the eye” for the Almighty, if ever I heard one...!! Fantastically profound thinking...at any age, let alone in a small child.
Ah, mentioning the word child there, leads me to nitpick a little with her choice of the word “childish”. I would have sooner she’d chosen to use “child-like”...but what the heck, I won’t lose any sleep over it.
And then we come to this magnificent third verse...
Mr Harding's garden was all taken By lesser men with concrete in their minds. Factory chimneys grew instead of daisies, No butterflies from that assembly line. My mum she faded faster than a flower, Dad sat in the darkness and cried. Mr Harding walks a little slower than before, But still he tends the grave where they lie.
What an immensely brilliant verse that is. It stirs the soul. And those last four lines in particular represent lyric writing at its best: they tell such a big story, yet with an astonishing economy of words...culminating in that final line which still makes me gasp at its combination of shock, sadness and beauty.
And then comes this noble and wistful thought...
Wherever it is they've gone to I hope that they will find A proper sort of garden of the Mr Harding kind.
And then the adult Maggie reflects on the dichotomy within her: which side of her will actually triumph...the loving child in her, or the much more streetwise adult?
The foolish woman sometimes feels despairing Because it seems so difficult to find. The child tries to plant a little everywhere she goes That special love of the Mr Harding kind.
And concludes that maybe the child in her will eventually win out...
Someday when I'm older maybe I shall find That I've grown into a gardener of the Mr Harding kind.
Gee....let us pause to swallow hard, and get the dust from our eyes.
What a song lyric! And set to an attractive simple melody that fits the words like a glove. A thousand top class songwriters would have given anything to have written that masterpiece.
And now, as promised, here is Maggie in Belgium, eight years ago, singing her song Perfumes Of Arabia. Go 3.50 into the clip, for this great anti (1990) Iraq war song, to start...
Gosh, I could so easily have Dai-ssected that one too. A fine song, with lots of references and nuances to dig into.
As I think I mentioned early in this piece, Maggie emigrated to Scotland in 1993. In closing this piece, all I can say is that England’s loss was Scotland’s gain.
Dai Woosnam, dai.woosnam@folkworld.eu
Photo Credits:
(1) Dai Woosnam,
(2ff) Maggie Holland
(unknown/website).
