Henry Green’s Literary Garden

In  a garden not far from where I live stands a steel sculpture representing a small house with a tree trunk rising from its roof. The house and tree are a rusty brown, the nine stylised leaves an olive green. A plaque beside the sculpture describes two themes. The work embodies the fusion of the urban and the wilderness. The house symbolises the head, that part of us which is a retreat for contemplation, and the tree, its branches and leaves, the growth of the thought process.

“The tree of man was never quiet,” wrote A.E. Housman. But here we see no turbulence in nature: apart from birdsong, all is peace. Set in a small bushland valley, the garden, with its stone terraces, nooks and paths, its creek, its plentiful native shrubs, ferns and shady trees, is a sanctuary in suburbia, providing respite for the visitor from “the thoughts that hurt him”.

This essay appeared in a recent Quadrant.
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In this setting, a sculpture combining ideas about the life…