Country Gardens
"Country Gardens" is an English folk tune collected by Cecil Sharp from the playing of William Kimber and arranged for piano in 1918 by Percy Grainger.
In 2008, "Country Gardens" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry.
A version of "Country Gardens" appears in the Quaker's Opera of 1728.Several Cotswold villages used differing versions of the tune for their Morris dances: Bampton in the Bush ; "Field Town" ; Headington and Longborough.Format of renditions
The tune and the Grainger arrangement for piano and orchestra is a favourite with school orchestras, and other performances of the work include morris dancing. Jimmie Rodgers sang a well-known version, which reached Number 5 in the UK charts in June 1962. The lyrics refer to several species of bird which are not native to England but are found only in the Americas. Anglo-Australian comedian Rolf Harris recorded a parody of the Rodgers version in the 1970s. Comedian Allan Sherman used this melody as the tune for his 1963 song, "Here's to the Crabgrass".Video clips
