i 
‘z CHAPTER I 
THE BAMBOO GARDEN 
F there be one feature which 
more than any other dis- 
tinguishes our modern gar- 
dens from the trim pleasaunces 
in which our forebears took 
their ease, playing their rub- 
ber of bowls decorously on 
lawns hemmed in by Yew 
hedges as stiff as their own 
ruffs, it is the value given to 
beauty of form in plants as 
apart from that of colour. 
No one who has seen at 
their best the giants and 
pigmies of the Bamboo 
family will deny their 
supreme loveliness in this 
‘ respect. The stately spears 
of Phyllostachys mitis, 
Arundinaria japonica. the Brobdingnagian plumes 
