The Garden’s Secret Language: Francis Palgrave’s Floral Poetry

September 28, 1824

On this autumn day, when garden conversations turn to seasonal farewells, we celebrate the birth of Francis Turner Palgrave, whose poetic vision captured the mysterious dialogues that unfold daily in our gardens.

While his name resonates through literary circles as the curator of The Golden Treasury (1861), that beloved anthology of English Songs and Lyrics which continues to grace bookshelves today, it is his garden poetry that speaks most tenderly to those who tend growing things.

In his hauntingly beautiful Eutopia, Palgrave presents us with a garden that exists just beyond our reach:

There is a garden where lilies
And roses are side by side;
And all day between them in silence
The silken butterflies glide.

How exquisitely he captures that peculiar longing known to every gardener - the desire to understand the secret language of flowers:

I may not enter the garden,
Though I know the road thereto;
And morn by morn to the gateway
I see the children go.

The final verses speak to that eternal mystery that keeps us returning to our gardens season after season:

They bring back light on their faces;
But they cannot bring back to me
What the lilies say to the roses,
Or the songs of the butterflies be.

Is this not the very essence of our relationship with our gardens?

We may arrange our lilies beside our roses, we may create paths for butterflies to glide along, but the secret conversations between flower and flower, between wing and petal, remain forever just beyond our understanding.