VIII APOLOGIA PRO BAMBUSIS MEIS 203 
against a background of some scrubby Pine or Juniper. That 
day I felt that I learnt how Nature intended Lilies to be 
planted ; and that was how Tarquin grew them,’ As I have 
said before, at that time my ignorance of plant life was com- 
plete ; but I had a great leaning to all that is beautiful and 
picturesque, and so my travels in many lands were insensibly 
an education in gardening. It is true that it was the garden 
and not the flower that attracted me, but the joy that I took 
in the one led to the study of the other, and so the great love 
of both was built up. 
To return to my Lilies. It is strange how the value to 
be obtained by planting great masses of one flower together is 
forgotten or neglected. How often, for instance, does one see 
stowed away in some corner a single plant of Erica carnea or 
Omphalodes verna, which ought to be grown by the hundred, 
or rather by the thousand! How rarely do you find the 
pretty little blue lobelia planted otherwise than in a thin, in- 
effective line! and how charming it is when you do come upon 
a great clump of it! I know a garden to the west of London 
where there is a really fine collection of plants, especially of 
herbaceous plants. They are grown with loving care; they 
are all planted in soil scientifically prepared to suit their 
several natures, and scrupulously labelled, so that every plant 
stands out with its rank and titles ostentatiously set forth in 
English and in Latin. No new rarity is announced in the 
nurserymen’s catalogues but what it at once finds its way into 
1 Hortus odoratis suberat cultissimus herbis, 
Sectus humum rivo lene sonantis aque. 
Illic Tarquinius mandata latentia nati 
Accipit, et virga lilia summa metit. 
Ovip, Fasti ii. 703. 
