A Garden for…

This workshop idea is based on poems by Dave Calder

The idea is that you create a garden for a famous person.

Here are a few examples:

Dali’s Garden

A large, confusing, hilly garden,

turn the corner, passed the broken hut,

a grand piano is being dragged by cows,

first one way,

then another.

Blink once with each eye

it’s gone, replaced by a huge, towering canvas –

Jimi Hendrix on the cross

looking down and smiling.

Walk up the hill,

turn to look at…

Nothing?

Some optical trick

at the top of the rise,

all views vanish.

Walk backwards down the hill, eyes closed.

Once you feel the flat lawn,

open your eyes.

You are back at the top again.

Gordon Jackson. 24^th. Aug.2010.

Whitby Folk Festival poetry workshop.

A Garden for Jane Austen

by Angela Topping (from my first collection Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (Stride 1988)

Geometry rules the paths,

the clipped box hedge.

Carrot fern and lettuce rose

line up to dance.

Heartease, columbine wink from borders

where no weed dares. Coy pinks and love-in-a-mist

dally with scented lavender, tall foxgloves.

Lawns clothe the dips and rises,

hedges and fences make secure

the land’s lie. From the rhododendrons

a cat glares.

Angela Topping's first collection cover