You all know the song; it’s the one everyone hums: “la la la to, before all shouting “In an English Country Gaaaarrrrdeeeen” right at the end. It’s almost a cathartic experience just to shout this last line out with a familiar group of people. However, how many of us have actually sung this song in an English Country Garden?

The noun: “English Country Garden”, makes an ordinary garden seem something quite unique to England, when in fact most countries have them. A Garden is nothing new, but I do suppose it is a status symbol for wealthy land owners, a cabbage patch cannot after all be considered a ‘Country Garden’.

“But what is inside a country garden?”

Well I’m glad you asked! According to the song there are a lot of sweet flowers, insects and song birds. Nothing that really sets apart the English garden from say a Chinese garden, which I assume also has a lot of sweet flowers, insects and song birds, but you know how we Brits try to be unique. The cuckoo and the quail, bobolink and tanager supposedly set the English Country

Garden apart from the rest, but may I ask how many people would be able to identify the ‘bobotwink’ or the ‘teenager’? Which gets to my next point; that the aesthetics of the country garden are no longer cared for in the ever increasing urbanity of modern day life. As transcendentalism encourages us; we must flock to our countryside, our refuge and our great symbol of calm and of order. It is there can we find our peace right in the heart of