While rootling around my home (once my 3 great aunties’ house) I found the following text, which is too good not to share. It was on an old postcard, marked Wannock Gardens, Polegate, Sussex – now, sadly and rather poignantly, a housing estate.
Commandments of the Flowers
Thou shalt learn to know the flowers of thy state
Thou shalt love them and cherish them
Thou shalt consider the places where they grow as thy great garden, and it thy aim to protect it
Thous shalt gather no more than thou can’t use
Thou shalt remember the seedtime of another year, and the joy of others who are to look upon the flowers
Thou shalt pass along thy knowledge of them, that they may find favour with the careless observer
Thou shalt learn from them the grace of line and the harmony of colour
Thou shalt consider how the sun, the wind and the rain join hands in completing their beauty for thee
Thou shalt preserve them in thy mind and in thy heart as a great lesson from Nature’s book
Thou shall not destroy, but shalt use thy best knowledge to bring two blossoms to the coming year where last year counted one