The Friendship Garden Poem by Sally Evans

Leaving the footbridge over the river,
the Black Pool on your right
where once mussels congregated,
you will find a new garden in a village of gardens.
Flowing walls give balance
and mirror the older garden,
their lines looped and linked.

While busy you may pass over
flowering local plants from the crags,
their Scottish and Latin names melding,
bluebell non-scriptus of the electric woods,
violets, viola odorata from roadsides,
foxglove digitalis, medicinal drug,
primroses, sovereigns in Gaelic.

White stones for the pearls the mussels gave,
a barrow for neolithic relics on the brae,
simple space beside big trees
with the river near, Main Street near,
library near, the last old boatsheds,
sun and rain changeable in the sweet air
among the birds and clouds of Callander.