Everything In The Garden Is Lovely by Alasdair Aston

Sometimes I get really fed up of ‘lovely gardens’ and all the other lovelies…and then I remember this poem…

Everything In The Garden Is Lovely by Alasdair Aston

Even the fat slug

That drags its belly nightly

Over dank paving

And into the heart of the lettuce

Is lovely.

And the seething myriads in the ant-hill

Are lovely.

The stealthy, disruptive mole,

The grubbing, wet-nosed hedgehog

Are lovely.

And the millipede,

The centipede,

The sexually reproductive woodlouse

Are lovely.

The dung fly and the dung beetle

Are double lovely.

The burying beetle, the emmet,

The devil’s coach-horse, the dor

Are lovely.

Bean blight, leaf scab, club root,

Rose canker, cuckoo spit, wireworm

Cutworm, carrot fly, codlin,

Woolly aphis, apple weevil,

Leaf curl, algae,

Big bud, brown spot,

Rust, smut and mildew

Are all of them lovely.

And the flowers are lovely, too-

Nightshade, broomrape, henbane,

Love-lies bleeding and dead-men’s fingers,

Viper’s bugloss, red hot poker,

Wormwood, woundwort, rue.

And the gardener himself is lovely-

With one eye on the stable clock

And the other on lovely nothing,

Flat on his back where he fell.

The lovely flies walk in his lovely mouth.

Everything in the garden is lovely.

Alasdair Aston 1975