GARDEN - GARDENS - GARDENING The Story Lovers World home page is at: http://www.story-lovers.com |
 |
 |
GARDEN - GARDENS - GARDENING Scroll down or click on your choice below |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT GARDEN - GARDENS - GARDENING
Advice, comments and references from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpt from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them to get more stories and information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell any stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
In performance, always credit your sources.
Posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) Tops & Bottoms (Caldecott Honor Book)
2) Fran Stallings' version of "The Giant Pumpkin" in The Ghost & I: Scary Stories for Paticipatory Telling
3) The Egyptian story, "The Wise Camel," found in a tape by Edna Mason Kaula African Village Folktales Audio Collection
4) "Blue Rose," a Chinese Folk tale, a version in World Folktales: An Anthology of Multicultural Folk Literature
Many sources may be found at:
http://www.story-lovers.com/listsbluerosesources.html
5) The garden is a prime symbol in cultures across the world, and appears in many mythologies as well as alchemical allegories etc. The story that springs to mind is the frame of the The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete
6) A Japanese tale, "The Mighty Prince," about a rich, powerful, but unhappy Prince with a bad temper who plunges his country into war. It is planting and tending a garden that brings peace to his soul. From Tales from Around the World (no author), Exeter Books (Marshall Cavendish), 1987.
No amazon.com source found; go to ABE books at http://tinyurl.com/yh6mjjw for sources.
7) A Japanese tale called The Mighty Prince ( http://tinyurl.com/yh6mjjw ), about a rich, powerful, but unhappy Prince with a bad temper who plunges his country into war. The people, sick of war and the Prince's victory parades go about with long faces. The Prince roars at them, asking why they are so sorrowful, but, afraid to answer, they remain silent. Later that same day, he rides through the countryside, stopping when he hears a soft humming sound. It's a little girl, singing to herself as she works in her small garden. She doesn't notice the prince standing behind her and he becomes angry at first because she's ignoring him. Then she turns around, sees him and humbly offers him a bag of seed. He is offended by the humble gift, but takes the bag without even a thank you and turns away, puzzled. That night he sleeps with the bag of seed by his pillow. The next morning he wakes full of strength and energy, as if ready for war, but instead goes out to work in the palace gardens, mumbling that "Planting is no work for princes, but it is better than fighting people who do not know how to fight back." His people are astonished to see the prince working in the gardens day after day, week after week, through heat and cold. Then one day Spring suddenly arrives and the garden bursts into flower and fragrance, abounding with insects and birds as well. Everyone is happy, but the Prince stands apart holding a spray of flowers. Tears roll down his face because he cannot understand why Spring makes everyone happy except him. "He never had understood, of course, but this year he cried because he had worked so hard to create a beautiful garden and he wanted so much to know the secret of happiness. Then, quietly, he seemed to hear the soft voice of the little girl speaking to him. It was telling him to look -- to look with all his heart at the flowers and the grass, the sky and the birds, the busy insects and all the laughing people. And suddenly the Prince saw them all as he had never done before. A great joy flooded his heart, and he saw the colors sparkling in the sun and he smelled the scent of a mnillion flowers. And for the very first time, he felt happiness and a real love for his people." The book I got this out of, Tales from Around the World (no author), Exeter Books (Marshall Cavendish), 1987 cites no authors and has no notes on origins, except for nationality. Anyone have another source for this story?
8) Wayfarer Tomm sent the joke about the garden's sweet potato who was so upset that she couldn't marry the man she loved, Rush Limbaugh. After all she was a "sweet po-ta-ter" and he was just a "com-mon-ta-tor."
9) "The Old Man Who Made Flowers Bloom" by Seki in his Folktales of Japan
10) In ancient Greece, it was the Garden of the Hesperides, where those women guarded the golden apples - apples that Hercules/Herakles had to fetch as one of his labors.
11) The garden in stories is nearly always related to the archetypal garden -i.e. Eden. But don't think that this is just a simple biblical motif - the garden of paradise appears in many scriptures, many preceding the Bible, and so there are many variations on this story. Ancient Hindu scripture has a garden of paradise, the centre of the cosmos, with a tree that satisfiedevery desire. The homes of the gods were surrounded by flowering gardens. In the middle east and elsewhere, the garden is square and walled, with a central fountain and running water. Islam has four gardens of paradise, each of a different level in the mystical journey of the soul. In ancient Greek it was the Garden of the Hesperides, where those women guarded the golden apples - apples that Hercules/Herakles had to fetch as one of his labours. The apples were of course symbolically the same as the biblical one. Their conception of paradise was the Fields of the Blessed, where the blessed went after death - see also the Elysian Fields and the Happy Isles. Avalon meant the Isle of Apples, and was linked with the same ideas. Japanese temples have a heavenly garden in front - a synthesis of the cosmos, with sacred tree of life. Zen gardens are relatively well-known as a meditative environment of symbolic perfection. The Incas had a garden of the sun - an image of the cosmos. The garden in general, in Christian symbolism and others, is linked with the Virgin and the purified soul, wherein virtuous and beautiful qualities have been tended and nurtured.
12) The long story about the man giving directions admits near the end that it is the best way to get there because you go by a beautiful garden, and the lady gardener sometimes gives away seeds.
13) Another long tale is "Pocket Full of Rocks," published in The New Era Magazine in Jan. of 1996, written by Larry A. Hiller. It is a story of a man who collected a rock every time he was hurt. Many years later some one asked what he did when someone was nice to him. He learned to plant seeds.
14) Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories (Anchor Folktale Library)
a) "The Gardner and His Master." It is about an estate with beautiful gardens and rare and exotic flowers all the work of a gardener who gets little credit by his Masters.
b) "The Adventures of a Thistle," which has a Christmas theme as well. A persistant weed flower brings a couple together and hangs on into the colds of winter. It has a nice ending: ""WIll I (be put in a pot or a frame?" asked the thistle bush. "You will be put in a fairy tale," answered the sun ray. And here it is!
c) "The Snail and the Rosebush." It is a good adult story on worth and self-centeredness - the rose blooming endlessly, the snail withdrawing into itself - the story having no ending -but a cycle that goes on and on.
15) Another garden tale for the holidays is The Selfish Giant
16) The old Irish tale about "The Dandelion." A long time ago, there began an argument among the living plants as to who was the most beautiful, the most special, the most blessed of all. The argument continued until the Faerie Queen was called upon to settle the problem. She sent a Flower Faerie, the last of the Devas to find the most perfect plant of all and to give this plant the blessing of the Faerie. The Deva first went to the rose. She asked," Rose, where would you most like to live?" The rose replied," Why, I want to live by a castle where the king and queen will pass by each day and exclaim over my beauty!" This made the flower faerie very sad, and she went away with tears in her eyes. Next she came upon the tulip and asked, " Where would you most like to live?" The tulip replied," I want to live in the park where everyday people will walk by and comment on my vivid colors!" Again the flower faerie walked away with a heavy heart. ( Add as many plants as you like here.) Finally, the Deva sat disheartened beside a dusty rode. She was about to give up and return to the land of faerie without giving the blessing, when she spied a bright yellow flower reaching up on a long thin stalk. It was fluffy and waved at her in the wind. The leaves were long and jagged and held close to the earth, but the flower ... how bright! "Little flower," she said, "where did you come from?" "Well, I was star and every night when I came out to play, I could just hear the children on earth saying their prayers and laughing as they went to bed. But I never got to see them. And then in the morning when the children got out of bed to play, my mom made me go to bed, so I never got to see them. I just wanted to play with the children a little bit. So, one morning I hid behind a cloud and then jumped down here to earth, but I landed here by this rode all by myself. And the harder I try to reach back up to the sky, the deeper my root goes down and I'm stuck." "Oh," said the Deva. "Well, little one, if you could live anywhere, where would it be?" The little flower brightened even more. "I'd like to live where ever there are children. I want to be the first flower that the children pick in the spring and take to their mothers. And I could tell if a child likes butter by being rubbed undertheir chins, and if a child makes a wish and blows my seeds, I could carry that wish on the wind." The Deva looked at the little plant and thought, "What a dandy! And as brave as a lion, too." Then she smiled upon the little flower and said,"Little flower, you shall have your wish. Where ever there are children, there shall you live, and I shall name you DANDELION most blessed of all the plants." And so it is that the dandelion grows with strength and determination, a blessing to all the children from the stars.
17) This might work as a story with a garden theme.
"The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener" from Sacred Texts.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mcft/mcft11.htm
Created 2003; last update 3/23/12.
Story Lovers World ... 707-996-1996 P.O. BOX 446, Sonoma, CA 95476 |